


The Moments in Between

by lonelyspaghetti



Series: The Lion and the Fawn [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, Correspondence, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Lyrium Withdrawal, Mutual Pining, Religious Discussion, Slow Build, Unresolved Romantic Tension, a lot of pacing, too many Trevelyans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:01:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 74,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyspaghetti/pseuds/lonelyspaghetti
Summary: A woman in desperate search of herself and a man in search of redemption. They find each other and together they find themselves. Despite herself, she must face her trauma and shortcomings and learn to lead, and he must learn to let go of that which he cannot control.This is a REWRITTEN work in progess.





	1. Fistfuls of Elfroot

**Author's Note:**

> You might remember this story or you might not. If you do, you'll remember that I posted about 11 chapters in the span of about a month, then got burned out for (seemingly) no reason, then posted another chapter out of nowhere, and went silent again. 
> 
> Oops. 
> 
> Anyway, this is a second version of that. A lot will remain the same, but a lot of things will be changing -- hopefully for the best. Let me know what you think.

“Can we trust her?”

“We’ve got no reason _not_ to.”

“Nonsense. There are plenty of reasons not to trust her, but we need her. She’s the only one who can—”

“—who can close the breach, we’ve been down that road. Do we at least know who she is?”

“Daphne Trevelyan.”

“Trevelyan? That sounds familiar…”

“A very large and very old family with distant relations all over Thedas. She is half-Orlesian herself, the youngest daughter of Bann Maxwell Trevelyan and Lady Evelyn d’Aspremont. A political union resulting in five living children.”

“Her connection to Orlais could help.”

“But can we _trust_ her?”

* * *

 

Cullen often finds himself reflecting upon the newest addition to the Inquisition, more so than he cares to admit. She _is,_ he concedes, a curiosity; the youngest (and least notable) daughter of a Bann in the Free Marches falls out of a hole in the sky, knowing next to nothing about how she survived the explosion at the Conclave – or even that there _was_ one, goes from heretic to Herald in a manner of hours, and is now expected to be the face of the organization. Her arrival, brief incarceration, and subsequent induction into the Inquisition was a tense day for all parties involved. 

Their first meeting beyond her introduction into the Inquisition goes about how Cullen expects: Trevelyan sidles up to him in the midst of his overseeing training and mentions that she’d like to get to know him, seeing as they’re about to work closely for the foreseeable future, so he answers her questions patiently and thoughtfully. She asks him about his experience as a Templar, but doesn’t push the subject when he briefly mentions Kinloch, though he sees the subtle shift in her expression – understanding and perhaps an ounce of pity. In turn she offers very little information herself, which Cullen doesn’t realize until reviewing his day during his evening walk from the tavern within Haven’s walls to his tent.

It bothers him more than it should, but he’s not sure how to approach the subject. _I showed you mine, you show me yours_ is the first thought that flies through his head, one which makes him snort. He supposes he can ask her about her past when she comes around again, but he’s not going to go out of his way to pester her. They both have far too much to do.

A movement in the tree line just off the village wall halts him in his tracks and sends his hand flying to his sword, and through his fatigue and the twilight he spots the shadow of a human figure emerging from the stand of trees. _Speak of the demon..._

It’s Trevelyan, doing Maker knows what with two fistfuls of Elfroot and a pack slung around her shoulder. His hand falls from his sword and he approaches her, intercepting her path back to the village.

“Lady Trevelyan,” he starts, eyeing the Elfroot clutched in her hands curiously, “collecting for winter?”

She frowns, her furrowed brow and slight pout lending her an endearing quality. “You mean to tell me this isn’t winter?” She says with a note of irritation, gesturing to the banks of snow surrounding them. Cullen fights the urge to smirk.

“I often forget how far away from Ostwick you are.” She makes a displeased noise in the back of her throat and continues toward the village gate, her head inclined in such a way that Cullen reads as an invitation to walk with her. He falls easily into step.

“Have you spent time here, besides the Inquisition?”

There she goes, asking him questions, unlikely to return any details herself. “I grew up in Honnleath, a few days east of here. And were you raised in Ostwick?” he asks. She shrugs.

“Yes. It’s right off the coast and rarely snows. Most winters, I didn’t even need to pull out my winter cloaks. This is… disagreeable.” She scowls at the landscape and kicks a snow drift. Cullen surveys the land around them – the scent of the evergreens settles fresh and crisp in his lungs and the brilliant white of the snow reflects the failing sun, glowing orange and purple as long shadows creep along the ground. The walls of mountains enclosing them produces more of a protective feeling than a claustrophobic one. He finds Haven to be quite picturesque, despite the sinister swirling green cloud hanging above the mountain.

“I suppose, being Fereldan, I am predisposed to handle the snow better.”

“I suppose you are,” she repeats, eyeing him curiously. Cullen feels the need to shrink under her gaze, but he resists the urge.

The Elfroot rustles in her hand with the passing of a breeze and he’s reminded of his original question. “What are you planning on doing with that?” he asks.

She looks down at her hands, as if having forgotten they were attached to her wrists. “Oh. Threnn needs them. Well, I suppose that means the Inquisition needs them. I’m wondering if perhaps I should just give them to Adan so he can make healing potions with it, but then Threnn might not hear that I _did_ go collect Elfroot and go back on her deal –”

“Deal?” Cullen interrupts, nearly positive that she would have continued rambling. “What deal?”

Trevelyan flushes and stops walking. “Oh. Oops.”

He lifts a brow, as if expecting one of his soldiers to admit that he broke his sword after trying to get it unstuck from a tree stump. 

She presses her lips together, her nose and cheeks turning a pretty shade of pink. “We struck a deal. She needed iron for weapons and Elfroot for potions, and I… well…” she pauses, and Cullen’s mind flies in a million different directions. What could she possibly need from Threnn that requires negotiating? Lyrium, strong alcohol? Smutty literature? The look on his face must be severe enough that she ducks down, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair. “I asked for yarn.”

The tension in his neck uncoils, but he’s still somewhat confused. “Yarn?”

“Yes, and needles. It’s frivolous and unproductive, but I wanted yarn. To knit.” She looks up sheepishly.

“You knit?” he asks, somewhat charmed by the idea of her sitting by a fire somewhere, a blanket or sweater in her lap. He continues walking and she catches up to him.

“It helps me think and calms me down,” she admits, wrists flexing in what he has since identified as a nervous habit. Her hands are full and she has no way to hide herself from his judgment or whatever it is she’s afraid of, but he can tell how having something productive to busy her hands might help her. He’s noticed over the last few days that she never sits still for long, often shifting from one foot to the other or tapping out rhythms on tables or her legs with her fingers. He’s reminded again of how very young she is, though he doesn’t know her age and isn’t sure how to ask her. Something within him aches for her and the situation she’s found herself in.

“Threnn wouldn’t get you yarn?”

She huffs. “She said that while she has weapons to forge and potions to brew, the last thing on her mind is getting the bloody Herald of Andraste a set of needles and some yarn so she can knit herself a scarf.”

“Her words?” he asks, bristled. He’s dealt with Threnn enough to know that at her best, she’s prickly, and when irritated or stressed is downright insufferable. The thought of anyone giving the young woman in front of him a hard time stirs a foreign, protective feeling within him that he hasn’t felt since his early days as a Templar.

“Not quite, but the message was clear. She has a point, I suppose. Our resources are limited.” Though she says she understands, the disappointment in her eyes pulls at a long dormant protective fraternal instinct.

Cullen very much wants to get Trevelyan some yarn.

“It’s no trouble!” she exclaims, mistaking the stormy look on his face. “I draw as well, to pass the time, and there’s no shortage of vellum and charcoal around here.”

“Are you also skilled with the pianoforte?” he teases, and she makes a face at him.

“Dreadful. I’m afraid drawing and ‘needle craft’ were the only two things in finishing school I could sit still for.”

Cullen tries to imagine a younger Trevelyan plunking away at a shiny piano or taking tea in a solarium. “I imagine you were a very active child,” he says.

“Quite. My mother had me chased out of the stables for a solid six months until I could recite with perfect clarity the history and importance of Orlais’ great emperors in chronological order.”

“I take it you’re the adventurous sort?” he asks, chuckling. The answering grin on her face warms him.

“I suppose you could say that,” she answers, flushing slightly. They’ve arrived at the door of her private cabin, and the stalks of Elfroot are starting to wilt in her grip.

“This is where I leave you, Lady Trevelyan,” he says with a polite bow. She frowns slightly.

“You could call me Daphne, Commander.”

“I could,” he repeats, but that would be crossing a line – a line that neither have them had thought to draw or have no immediate desire to cross, but a line which is there nonetheless, quietly discouraging the two from partaking in anything more than polite conversation. She takes his vague response in stride, acknowledging The Line, content to simply have someone who doesn’t treat her as either a pariah or a savior, but a normal human being. She offers him a smile, demure and close-lipped, but he knows it to be the first genuine smile to cross her face since waking up shackled in the bowels of Haven’s Chantry.

“Just don’t call me Herald.”

“At your request, my lady.” The honorific is polite enough and appropriate given her station, but there’s the barest hint of flirtation in his voice (and he wonders if it was intentional or instinctive that his voice rolled half an octave lower as he said it) and the faint blush on her cheeks stirs something within him he’d not felt in over a decade. He returns her smile and leaves her to her business to bargain over Elfroot and iron, ignorant of the Herald’s eyes staring holes into the back of his head.

* * *

The morning she and Cassandra are to depart for the Hinterlands, Cullen emerges from his tent shortly after dawn to find her pacing by the lake shore, worrying the fingertips of her kidskin gloves. He can tell by the line drawn between her brow and the tight pinch of her shoulder blades that she’s anxious. He makes his presence known by approaching her very noisily; the snow crunching under foot snaps her head up and stops her in her tracks.

Her hair is in a haphazard bun and she’s bundled into an Inquisition coat, and the shy light of dawn bleeding into the sky and across the snow illuminates her in a rosy glow. His speech is momentarily lost on him and he knows he’s openly staring, her surprise slowly melting into discomfort. She shifts and The Line wedges itself firmly in place between them.

“Commander. Are you always up so early?” she finally asks, breaking him from his mortifying silence.

He clears his throat and looks anywhere but at her, fixating on the shimmering lake beyond her. “Either at dawn or just after,” he answers. A breeze lazes across the lake and she shivers, withdrawing her arms closer to her body. “And you?” he asks, stepping forward to close the distance from awkward to conversational.

“I couldn’t sleep. I figured I’d just give up.” Upon closer inspection he can see the fatigue in her eyes, as well as the spark of anxiety.

“You depart for the Hinterlands today, do you not?” he asks. She nods, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. Her right hand still picks at the stitching of her left glove. “Is everything alright?” he asks, his voice once more dropping half an octave. Instead of flirtation, it’s meant to be comforting. Trevelyan shrugs.

“I don’t know. Cassandra doesn’t trust me. Half the Inquisition doesn’t trust me, and neither does most of the Chantry. I know what I’m meant to do, but I still don’t know why I’m _here._ ” She throws her hands in the air. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

Cullen feels a tug of sympathy pulling him towards her, but The Line remains boldly and invisibly planted in the snow between them. The twist of pity on his face does little to help her, and when she reads his expression she scowls at him. “I understand what you’re feeling,” he finally says. She sends him a look as if to say _‘do you?’_ and he takes another step forward, stopping short of placing a hand on her shoulder. “Of course I can’t immediately relate to your unique situation, but I can try.” He pauses, trying to choose his words carefully. He knows the Trevelyans have close ties to the Templar Order and he remembers Leliana mentioning that the Herald herself was promised to the Chantry, but he has little bearing on her individual religious convictions. Lady Trevelyan had previously expressed disbelief that she could be the Herald of Andraste, so he’s unsure of how to navigate the conversation, especially having known her for less than a week.

“I know you feel like you don’t owe us any favors. You’ve been tossed into this position chiefly because of your unique ability –” he gestures to her left hand, still wrung in the grasp of her other – “and beyond that, you have no connection to the Inquisition or its cause. I can see how that would be frustrating. I’m sure you want nothing more than to go home.”

She stares at his chin and processes his words, the line between her brows deepening slightly. “I didn’t know how to put my frustrations into words, but you seem to have captured them,” she says, her voice masking her anxiety. “It’s a lot of what you described, but with the pressure to perform for people who have no idea who I am. I feel…” she breaks off, brushing past him to stare out at the slowly rising sun. “I don’t know.” Her shoulders release in a long exhale and Cullen squirms in his armor, the human instinct to reach out and comfort her nearly taking over.

Trevelyan laughs humorlessly. “This is _not_ how I imagined this trip.” She turns to face him again. “I was specifically instructed to _watch_ and _listen_ – and here I am, in a pivotal role in an organization I didn’t even know existed until I got here.” He watches her closely.

“Do you remember anything from the Conclave at all?”

She sighs and he wonders how many times she’s been asked that.

“Only what happened in the Fade, before I fell out of the Breach. Beyond that…” she reaches a hand out, fingers flexing for something in front of her that he can’t see. “It’s like squinting into the darkness in the vain hope that you’ll see the outline of something that isn’t even there.”

“That must be frustrating,” he offers quietly, fixated on the slim lines of her fingers, still reaching out to the rising sun. Her hand falls to her side and he meets her eyes.

“Maddening.” They fall into heavy silence and she speaks again.

“What if I fail?” she asks quietly into the snow. She doesn’t meet his eyes but he stares anyway, studies her profile, and decides that she's far too pretty to be stuck in a valley working for an organization she didn't sign up for. 

“You won’t.”

“I’ve done nothing to prove I’m capable of helping your cause,” she argues. Cullen frowns. This is not the coy young woman with fistfuls of Elfroot from yesterday.

“You’ve closed a handful of rifts. I saw you fight in the valley – you’re capable with weapons, if untrained. You won’t fail.”

“You’re saying that because you have to,” she mutters. She still won’t look up, but her ears are tipped pink.

“I say it because I believe it,” he replies firmly, and perhaps there’s a hint of impatience in his voice that he didn’t keep in check, because her eyes snap up to meet his, rounded in surprise.

“Oh,” she says simply. “I suppose it’s in my best interest to believe you.”

“It’s a simple mission,” he assures. “We wouldn’t have you do anything you’re not capable of.”

“No dragons?” she asks, her mouth turning up slightly. He smirks back, declining to inform her of the reports of a high dragon in the hills west of Redcliffe.

“Perhaps we should improve your combat skills before throwing you at a dragon.”

She grins at him and finally stops picking at her gloves, sparing a glance over his shoulder. Soldiers are starting to emerge from tents and runners are beginning their tasks.

“I should pack,” Daphne says, stepping around him. He lifts his hand in farewell and watches her depart, but she stops and turns a few paces away. “Commander… thank you.”

He nods, a small smile playing on his lips. “Of course, my lady.”


	2. Grounded

Her first brush with death starts with a bandit archer knocking her out of the tree she’d commandeered, from which she’d picked off enemies out of the line of fire. He had fired three arrows in quick succession and each had narrowly missed, but Daphne had gotten the hint: get out of the damn tree. And so she does get out of the tree, unsure of where she could possibly sneak off to, but knowing that if she finds herself in the middle of the skirmish Cassandra would kill her – if the bandits don’t first.

She thinks she’s safe enough to scout the area, find an outcropping of rock to perch upon and rain fire from, but her reconnaissance is cut short by a snapping twig behind her. On instinct she whips around and is met with the flash of a blade arcing straight into her face, and the tree behind her offers no room to escape, and so she considers that this stinging flash of steel might be the end of the Herald of Andraste (briefly may she reign), but instinct takes over and she finds herself slamming the limb of her longbow into the bandit’s neck.

This winds him and gives Daphne a chance to escape, and so she does, darting away and nearly onto the sword of another bandit.

_Out of the cauldron…_

Daphne sorely wishes she had her favorite silverite rapier with her right now, although she knows for a fact that a blade as thin as that would shatter upon contact with an armored opponent. She takes another whack with her bow, but it splinters in her hand and she’s left with two jagged hunks of wood held together with a bowstring. _You could choke him,_ she reasons, skirting around the hulking figure and trying to find a way to get behind him, _but that would require you to jump on him. and he’s not exposing his flank._

“Piss,” she mutters to herself, briefly making eye contact with Solas, who is off to her right setting criminals on fire with nary a stitch out of place. He seems too busy to help her. A second later, however, Daphne feels rather than hears the stiff spark of an ice mine settling beneath her feet. She hops backward just in time for the mine to explode in a shower of tinkling ice and freeze her opponent solid. A crossbow bolt whizzes past her and the bandit shatters.

Sometimes, she really loves magic.

“Thank you!” she calls out to her companions, abandoning the broken bow in favor of a short blade tucked into the scarf tied around her waist.

Too short, she mutters to herself, it’s meant to be used off-handed with a longer blade, but she doesn’t have time to wish for a better knife because another swordsman is charging her far too fast for her to escape. She crouches low and squares her shoulders, is ready to roll to her right to avoid the bandit’s descending blade, but a not-too-distant and glorious _ka-chunk_ echoes around her head and the bandit’s snarling face opens into a flurry of pain and rage as a bolt rips through the shoulder of his sword arm and he drops the weapon with a clang, but he’s too large and moving too fast, so _of course_ he slams Daphne into the ground, pinning her beneath his hulking, unwashed frame, bleeding from his shoulder onto her chest and…

She’d managed to stab him, her little knife embedded between his ribs. He pulls back with a gasp, gurgles blood into Daphne’s face but she’s too busy to be disgusted, preoccupied with how very green his eyes are, boring into her, green like hers and her brother’s and her father’s, and she suddenly can’t breathe and it has nothing to do with the fact that a fully grown, fully armored man is dying on top of her. She watches as the light leaves his eyes and his lungs collapse, manages to move her head before his neck goes limp and his face falls neatly onto her shoulder.

She finds herself wanting to cry, vomit, and faint at the same time and she lies there, content to pretend that she’s died along with the man she just impaled, watches the sun shining merrily through the trees as another person’s blood continues to seep into her leathers.

Cassandra kicks the man off of her and helps her up.

“Are you hurt?” she asks, rather concerned, noticing that her bow is nowhere near her and her only knife is still shoved into someone’s ribs.

Daphne mumbles something that nobody (not even she) understands and wobbles on her feet, barely conscious of Solas’ steadying hand at her waist before she faints.

* * *

A note appears with Cullen’s breakfast, long-dried water marks blurring the ink in some places:

_Commander,_

_Bandits on the east road are dealt with. Supplies and food for refugees are secured. Mother Giselle riding out ahead of us, agreed to join the effort, wants me to travel to Val Royeaux (please don’t make me). Apostates and Templars are horrible._

~~_I killed_ ~~

~~_I nearly died_ ~~

~~_I had to_ ~~

_I don’t like this job._

_Trevelyan_

Beneath her name, elfroot leaves line the bottom of the page.

* * *

_Trevelyan,_

_Good work. Find out about the horse master on your way back. I wouldn’t make you go to Val Royeaux, but Lady Montilyet is another story._

_If you liked this job, I’d worry about your character._

_Be safe._

_Rutherford_

She keeps it in her coat pocket and rereads it surreptitiously whenever icy fingers of panic close around her throat. Good work. Be safe. It grounds her.

* * *

They arrive in Haven a day after they’re scheduled to and Trevelyan is limping beside her horse. She passes the reins to a soldier and winces, favoring her left side. Her lip is split. There’s a deep bruise blooming on her jaw. The commander is angry.

Cullen, for his part, refrains from descending upon her like a housewife until she’s within the Chantry walls.

“You need to learn to fight,” he says plainly, and Trevelyan glares at him with unamused green eyes. _Good work, be safe_.

“The Breach is green, snow is cold.” Now is not the time for humor, so he does not reward her with a laugh. He keeps his arms crossed and continues to appraise her. “I know how to fight,” she sighs tiredly, and at his raised brow she rolls her eyes. “I know how to _fence.”_

“Fencing isn’t fighting.”

“You should say that to my cousin,” Daphne responds tartly, crossing her arms and blinking once, twice. “Nearly took her hand off.”

“What happened?” he asks of Cassandra, freeing her from his gaze. The Seeker comes up next to her at the war table and places a hand on Daphne’s shoulder. A squeeze. _Calm down, you did fine._

“Bandits in Hafter’s Woods. We dispatched the small company that attacked us, but I believe they’re operating out of the abandoned villa deeper within the forest.” She pauses, looking her over. “We were ambushed. The Herald fought well. She’s very light on her feet.”

“Years of _fencing_ ,” Daphne supplies, somewhat smugly.

“Dancing with a needle in a parlor is not suitable combat training,” Cullen says stiffly.

“What about a mace?” Daphne asks. Cullen draws an unamused brow. “Or a bow? I already know how to shoot.”

“So does Varric,” he says, dismissing that option. “We need another pair of feet on the ground, not in the trees.”

Leliana taps her chin. “We can start a training regimen when you’ve healed a bit. For now, what can you tell us about your work in the Hinterlands?” Cullen and Daphne exchange a look, agreeing to table the discussion until later.

Daphne nods and braces her fists on the table, watching as Cassandra spreads a regional map over the table. “Well, we’ve managed to make camp here, here and here,” she starts, gesturing to two camps on the outskirts and one in the woods. “There’s a cult over here who’ve begun worshiping the Breach, set themselves up in an old fortress. I told them their time is better spent helping the refugees. According to their Speaker, they work under the Inquisition’s name now.” She takes a shallow breath through the catch in her ribs. “So there’s that, I suppose. We’ve stuck to the outskirts and the woods, mostly. We’re avoiding Witchwood and the west road into Redcliffe until we can clear out more of the Templars and apostates or until I can learn to throw a punch.”

“Whichever comes first,” Cullen finds himself saying, smirking into the scowl she throws at him. Josephine, who has remained silent until now, clears her throat.

“Excellent work, Herald. Any word from the farms?”

Daphne winces at the honorific. “They won’t budge until we help them.”

“Of course,” Cullen sighs. “What do they need?”

“Demon wolves.”

Cassandra spares Daphne a slightly amused glance. “Simply put. They’re terrorizing their livestock and killing farmers. We need to flush out their den and drive them away,” Cassandra says.

“They also want us to scout the area for watchtowers so they have an advantage over bandits. I made myself useful and took a scout with me and took care of that while Cassandra and Varric picked their way through bands of Templars.” With a flourish, she pulls a roll of paper out of her coat and hands it to Cullen, who approves the locations with a nod.

“We’ll make short work of this.”

Daphne sighs and massages a knot in her forearm. “Are we done with that for now? If I see one more bear, I will scream.”

“Of course. You’ve done more than enough for now to take our case to Val Royeaux,” Josephine assures, pushing the Hinterlands map away from the Orlais side of the table. She points at a small marker on the map. “I think it’s time to take this to the Grand Clerics.”

Daphne swallows back the sharp sigh building in her chest and gives Cullen a look. He blinks placidly, as if he’d never written her a letter promising he’d never send her to Val Royeaux. _Traitor._

“Could I maybe sleep first?”

“You need to begin training eventually,” Cullen reminds her, tapping a finger against the haft of his sword. Daphne silently fantasizes running him through with it.

“Right. Let’s allow my ribcage to sort itself out first, shall we?” she bites out, poking around the angry bruise on her left side. “Did those healer mages come along with Mother Giselle?”

“They did,” Cassandra confirms.

“Lovely. Who’s training me?”

Silence fills the circle of adults and all eyes fall to Cullen, who does his very best not to roll his eyes. He instead clenches his jaw and eyes Daphne warily. They stare at each other in silent appraisal. “You have two days. We can work in the dungeons beneath the Chantry.”

Daphne barks a humorless laugh. “No, no we are _not._ I will not fuel more nightmares by spending any more time down there than I have, thank you.”

Cassandra has the decency to look a little guilty.

“There’s an old cabin in the woods behind the village that’s nice and secluded. It’s been empty for ages and it’s far enough from prying eyes that nobody will notice if I manage to cut my own arm open.”

Cullen debates this for a moment.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Two days,” he reminds her, the two fingers held up between them taunting her. They file out of the war room and Daphne makes her way over to Mother Giselle for medical attention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter, but the next one will come soon. promise.


	3. Lesson One: How not to Fall on Your Dagger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevelyan learns to fight, because fencing doesn't count.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of the body explanations here are taken pretty much verbatim from my own dealings with my students (I teach dance to teenagers and I'm not a professional), so if something sounds weird or inaccurate... it probably is.

“So here we are,” Daphne says proudly, gesturing to the abandoned cabin with wide, sweeping arms. “My home away from home… away from home.”

Cullen gives her a look. “You broke into an abandoned cabin?”

“Is it breaking in if it’s abandoned?” she counters, opening the door and letting herself in. He follows. There are a few drawings on a desk and a dish full of candied plums. There are recent embers in the fireplace. She makes herself busy by lighting candles.

“Trevelyan,” he starts, turning in slow circles about the small space, “have you been _living_ in here?”

She shuffles her feet and doesn’t meet his gaze. “Only when I don’t want to be found.”

There’s a sad timbre in her voice that stops the incredulity within him cold. It’s something like anxiety, and when he searches her face there’s desperation in her eyes that shuts him up.

“It’s not like I sleep here,” she says defensively, although she has nothing to defend. “I mean. Only once, and it was an accident.”

“Alright,” he concedes. “I understand.” She smiles and begins clearing the space, pushing chairs and a table into the other room. He helps her, and before long they’re left standing on a threadbare rug surrounded by candles burning on windowsills.

“What’s first, Commander?” she asks, cracking her knuckles and rolling onto the balls of her feet.

“You didn’t seem so eager when we demanded you learn how to fight,” he says, removing his surcoat and making short work of his armor. She pokes at her previously tender left side and then ties her hair back.

“I was cranky and you fussed at me.”

“I did _not_ fuss at you,” he says, tilting his head to the side.

“You very well did.”

“What did I say?” he asks, and he begins circling her, watching how she shifts her weight between her feet, how she keeps her knees soft and her ribs lifted out of her hips. _This may not be as hard as I thought._

“’You need to learn to fight,’” she quotes, her voice rolling an octave lower, a deep frown setting over her features. She snaps out of it and looks at him expectantly, now circling him as he does her. He pauses.

“I do not sound like that,” he says, “and that was not fussing.”

“There was a lecture in the back of your throat just _waiting_ to come out.”

Cullen scowls. “Be that as it may, it’s true. You’ve no business going back out there if you don’t know how to fight.”

“I can –”

“Fencing does not count.”

“ _Fine._ ”

Cullen takes a deep breath. “Very well,” he begins, “the most important part is posture.”

“Posture,” she echoes plainly, brow arched.

_I take it back,_ he thinks to himself, _this is going to be much more difficult than I anticipated._

“It’s important to maintain correct posture at all times –”

She gracefully –annoyingly—tendus a leg behind her and sinks into a near flawless _en garde._

“Were you taught by a Chevalier?” he asks, only a little envious of the depth of her crouch. She smirks.

“Yes. I’m half-Orlesian, after all.”

Cullen wants to groan and also punch her, just a little, but of course he never would. So he skips the posture lecture and begins circling her. She does the same, maintaining her low stance.

“So, rapiers?” he asks. She nods. “Do you want to stick to knives?”

“You seem to be set on me using knives.”

He shrugs, still circling her. He notes how she manages to stay on the balls of her feet, keeps her shoulders low and back. Noble. Bandits and apostates and rogue Templars don’t fight nobly. “We can try a sword, but you’re small and your current skillset seems better suited for something light. That’s not to say that Harritt can’t make something custom-weighted for you. Cassandra says you’re fast?”

“Varric has started calling me Fox.”

He snorts. “Of course.”

“I can stick to daggers. I think I’ll like them.”

“Daggers it is.”

She pauses, rising from her crouch, and he follows. “Are you really qualified to be teaching me how to fight with daggers? You’re a Templar.”

“And?”

“And you were trained with swords and shields.”

“And archery and daggers, to an extent. Do you know how many weapons I keep on my person at all times?”

“No… wait. Two? No. Three?” Cullen suppresses a groan.

“That was rhetorical. The point is, I know enough to teach you how not to kill yourself.”

“Don’t fall on your blade. Next lesson.” She waves him along.

“Perhaps it’d be better worded as ‘how not to get yourself killed.’”

“Fine – don’t fall on someone else’s blade.”

“Maker’s breath…”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath, trying to recall a part of the Chant useful for summoning patience. When he opens his eyes again Trevelyan is grinning cheekily at him from across the room, and he gets an idea.

“Fine. Try to pin me.”

The grin slips from her face.

“I’m a large man. Try to knock me down. You were taught to fight for sport, not for life.”

“You said yourself that I’m small.”

Now she’s backpedaling, and Cullen is secretly, perversely satisfied at her sudden loss of confidence.

“Then use _my_ size against me.”

“How do I even…” she says, once more circling him, looking for structural weaknesses. Cullen shrugs, biting back the grin playing across his lips.

She false starts at him and he steps back, and she continues circling. “A hint?” she asks, and he shakes his head. She growls and lunges at him, arms outstretched, and he moves to pin her arms to her sides but she drops and slides between his legs, rolling to her feet behind him, at which point she launches herself at his back. Her arms are around his neck and her legs are secured around his hips. He steps forward with a grunt, nearly thrown, one arm pinned under her thigh but the other free to swipe at her behind him. He catches a fistful of hair and tugs, sharply but not too painfully, and she yelps, one of her hands flying to scratch at his wrist. He takes the opportunity to wedge his shoulder into the crook of her other elbow and she loses purchase of his neck, now held upright by her core and the steel trap of her thighs.

She scrambles to grip at his shoulder but his hand has abandoned her hair to wrench her wrist off of him, then free his right arm, and then throw her off his back completely. She rolls to the floor and stays there, glaring petulantly at him from the rug. He’s impressed, though he won’t tell her that. For someone who was taught to fence by a chevalier, she’s willing and able to fight dirty. _Fox isn’t an inaccurate nickname._

“Always keep your hair back,” he says, offering a hand. She pushes herself into a sitting position before taking it, and allows him to pull her to standing. Her hair _was_ back in a low ponytail, but the leather had snapped. “Not only does it literally give the opponent a handle on you, but it can obstruct vision. Even a braid is a liability.”

“Bun it is,” she says tartly, braiding her hair back with deft fingers and tying it off. “Can we pretend I have a bun today and keep going without dirty hair tricks?”

He scoffs. “Launching yourself at my back was a dirty move.”

“Almost bit you,” she says, grinning. “Now tell me, how exactly am I supposed to bring an opponent of your size and mass down?”

He chuckles. “Are you willing to pay attention now?”

“Yes, sir,” she mumbles, and he slips to stand beside her.

He presses a hand into the space between her shoulder blades, pressing her into a crouch that she slips into with little difficulty. He frowns – while her crouch is deep and technically correct, her back is arrow straight and her neck held high. She looks less like a predator and more like a peacock. He slips a hand over her rib cage and the other over her shoulder blades, ignoring the tinge of pink blooming across her nose.

“You’re too open,” he explains, pressing against her ribs. She curls forward slightly, shifting her hips back, spine still straight. The hand on her back slides to correct her, pushing her hips forward until her spine is curved around her ribs, shoulders over her knees. “You need to close your front and protect your organs.”

“Oh.”

“Contrary to what you may believe, I _do_ know what I’m doing,” he mutters, looking her over.

“I never said you didn’t. What do I do with my hands?”

“We’ll put daggers in your hands soon enough.” Satisfied, he motions for her to relax. She withdraws to her full height, stretching her spine out. “Find that stance on your own. Shoulders forward,” he says, and she rolls them in slightly, “hips tucked, knees bent, low on the balls of your feet.” She responds easily, watching him watch her, tucking her elbows into her side instinctively. “Good. This is your basic defense stance. Widen your feet a little. Good. Now relax,” he says, and she straightens, rubbing her ribcage. He frowns.

“Just sore,” she assures him, and Cullen continues.

“What you need to remember is that a woman’s center of gravity is much lower than a man’s,” he says, shoving her shoulder. She gives way with ease, stumbling back slightly. “Yours is in your hips, mine is in my chest.”

She takes the opportunity to give him an experimental shove and he doesn’t move. Daphne hums, interested.

“So me launching myself at your chest did nothing but annoy you.”

“Correct, but you had the right idea by getting yourself behind me.” He positions himself in front of her and takes her arm, wrapping it around his waist, and speaking over his shoulder at her. “If my center of gravity is high, you have to knock my feet out from under me. If you were on the ground you could sweep my legs with a kick, but if you find yourself in the position you are now, the best way is to flip me.”

“Right,” she says. “…How.”

He chuckles. “Counter-pressure. Your left arm is round my left side, correct?”

“Ye-es,” she says, stepping away so their bodies aren’t quite touching, trying to visualize what he wants her to see.

“Crouch. Bring your left ankle around my right knee,” he says, nudging her knee with his hand. He feels her balance shift to her right as she does so, pressing her foot to the outside of his leg. “Now if you kick left and press down with your left arm, my center of gravity has no choice but to follow you.”

She hums again. “Oh.”

“Try it quickly, all at once.”

“You’re sure?” she asks, and he relaxes to look at her over his shoulder. In the span it takes for him to glance at her, she does as he had instructed and he finds himself looking up at her from the floor. She’s smirking with her hands on her hips.

“Clever,” he mutters, taking the hand offered in front of him. “Let’s see how you handle it when someone’s grabbed you from behind.”

* * *

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with being sore, Daphne has found, and that satisfaction keeps her from going insane when Cullen has her run through drills for the thirtieth time.

“Last time,” he promises, but she snarls and flips the blunted daggers in her hands.

“You said that five times ago.”

“You got sloppy.”

“Oh, I’ll show you sloppy –”

She rushes him and he brings up a shield, so she deflects to his shield arm and arcs her arm low, taps at his knee and he buckles it, brings his shield above him and she rolls over it so she’s behind him, pokes at the spot of exposed skin glinting in the firelight and “severs” the tendons in his shoulder. Cullen drops his shield and his arm dangles. Daphne flips the grip on her right dagger so she can catch his sword arm, reaches over his shoulder with the dagger in her left hand, and firmly plants the tip of the blade right over his heart. “Dead,” she proclaims happily. Cullen, still in his crouch, tilts his head up to look at her, a pleased expression on his face.

She realizes with a start that she’s practically embracing him from behind and releases his right arm from its hold and withdraws the arm over his shoulder, stands fully, and lets him rise.

“Good.”

“That was it, right?”

“Yes, that was it. We’re done for the day.”

“I’m getting better?”

“The last two weeks have seen much improvement,” Cullen concedes, raking a hand through his hair and looking about the room at the mess. A wooden shield lies in the center, various blunted practice blades littered across the floor.

She smiles, drops into a stool at the edge of the room, and pulls a pin from her hair, releasing her braid from its knot to fall over her shoulder. She fiddles with the leather cord at its tail as she watches Cullen straighten his tunic, noticing the breadth of his shoulders for the first time. He’s foregone his usual armor in favor of flexibility, instead wearing a plain tunic and a dark leather jerkin, close-fit and (if Daphne is being honest with herself) rather flattering.

_Did that really just cross my mind?_

It did, and Daphne blinks furiously and finds a very interesting spot on the floor in front of her. _Oh look, my boot is unlaced._ She tries not to think of the sliver of exposed skin from where his tunic has slipped open, or how his rolled sleeves flaunt lovely, well-muscled forearms. Or the shape of his–

“…Trevelyan?”

Daphne whips her head up, very conscious of the way his eyes are shining in the candlelight. _Tits._

“I’m sorry, I must not have heard you. Come again?”

He chuckles. “I asked to confirm that you’re leaving for Val Royeaux tomorrow.”

“Right,” she says, fiddling with the lace of a boot that was never untied. She avoids eye contact and tries her best to ignore the stupid fluttering in her stomach. “Yes, it should take about two weeks… Maker willing.”

He huffs amusement through his nose and rubs the back of his neck. “Make sure you practice with Cassandra when you make camp. Just run through what I’ve taught you so it becomes second nature.”

“Of course, Commander,” she mumbles into her knee. She can feel his eyes on her, studying her and trying to find a reason for her sudden shift in attitude. She tucks her laces into the boot she’d been picking with and stands, stretching out the slowly stiffening muscles across her shoulders. “I believe Leliana is expecting me,” she says, gathering her coat from the floor and throwing it over her shoulders.

“She is?” Her hand freezes on the door knob.

“Ah…” _no, but I need to get out of here before I say something embarrassing._ “Yes. Something about how to address the Grand Clerics when I get there. Left Hand, and… all that…” she finishes lamely, swinging the door open and inching out of their secret abandoned cabin, leaving a very confused commander within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter four is basically ready. Those of you who've read the story in the past will recognize it pretty easily. I'll probably post it around Saturday night, but don't get used to quick updates all the time, you hear?


	4. The Ladies Trevelyan Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne gets a letter from home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AKA a whole lot of nothing happens. Hopefully some insight into our dear Herald's life. Maybe a content warning for shitty families?

_“Young lady, **what**_ _do you think you’re doing?”_

_The girl looks down at her mount as if she wasn’t expecting to be seated upon a horse. “It would seem that I’m riding a horse,” she bites out, refusing eye contact with the older woman. The air between them crackles._

_“You skipped your piano lessons.”_

_“I’m shit at piano. There’s no point.” She swings a leg over her horse and dismounts, handing the reins off to a stable boy with a tight smile._

_“Language.”_

_“It’s true,” she says, not bothering to apologize, kicking mud off her boots and wiping dirt from her hands onto her breeches. The woman follows her daughter’s movements with obvious distaste, as if seeing her child in pants is an offense on par with treason._

_“Perhaps you’d be better if you didn’t skip lessons.”_

_“Perhaps, but I still hate it.”_

_“A lady’s place is not straddling a horse bareback like an Avvar warlord.”_

_“Forgive me, I forgot to sit sidesaddle like an Avvar war-lady.”_

_She ducks the withering glare and beats her mother back into the house, smirking all the way back to her chambers._

* * *

Daphne scowls at the makeshift target board on the dock where she’d been practicing her knife throwing technique for the better part of two hours. She, Cassandra, Solas, and Varric had arrived from Val Royeaux three days ago and she walked into her cabin for some much deserved sleep in a real bed only to be greeted with a sealed envelope bearing the Trevelyan crest. She’s yet to open it.

She yanks the blades out of the thin board, tucks them back into her belt, and fits the board under her arm, looking across the frozen pond, the sun annoyingly bright overhead, ice twinkling in the light. If it weren’t for the sickly green hole in the sky, it would almost be a perfect morning. She trudges through the snow towards Haven, trying not to think about the envelope on her desk.

She nears the soldiers’ tents and has half a mind to go bother the Commander (because that almost always puts her in a good mood), but she notices that he’s in in the midst of conversing with Cassandra. Upon closer inspection, they both seem to be rather relaxed, and Cassandra seems to be smirking at something Cullen is saying. He looks likewise amused, and Daphne feels a queer tug of jealousy under her navel and she doesn’t bother fighting it. She’d known for a few weeks that she has a slight crush on Cullen, and it absolutely infuriates her.

She chances a glance again. She refuses to admit how attractive he and Cassandra look standing next to each other, he all strong planes and she composed of sharp striking angles. Both tall and majestic, polishing swords by moonlight, probably, and seducing each other over military strategies…

 _Do not think of sword polishing, Trevelyan._ She blushes deeply and ducks her head the moment Cassandra’s (striking) grey eyes meet hers. Oh, Maker. _Is she waving me over?_ _Do not go over there. Pretend you didn’t see her._

But Cassandra calls out to her, because of course she does, and Daphne grits her teeth and changes course to stand before the pair of glamorous people before her. She schools her face into one of polite disinterest, smiling blandly and looking between the two.

“Lady Seeker, Commander,” she greets, nodding between them.

“I’m just curious as to your progress,” she inquires, gesturing to the board under her arm. She knows perfectly well that she’s been watching. Daphne’s been within viewing range of the tents the entire morning, throwing knives at a board, pretending it was a bear. Or Chancellor Roderick _._ Or Cullen.

“Oh… you know. Slow.”

“I had no idea you were skilled in throwing blades,” Cullen remarks, somewhat impressed. Daphne scoffs.

“You know as well as I do that I can barely hold a knife, let alone throw one.”

“Benefit of the doubt,” Cullen says, and Daphne suppresses a hard eye roll.

“And, of course… I’ve found physical activity helps me work through my frustrations.” Cassandra frowns.

“Frustrations?”

“Do you wish to talk about anything?” Cullen asks at the same time.

_Yes, I’d love to talk about how I just want to put your face on my face but you see me as an unruly schoolgirl. I’d also like to point out that half of Thedas wants me dead and the other half is putting me on an impossible pedestal. Have I also mentioned that my family, who shipped me off – essentially to my death – is only just now attempting to contact me? Probably because they think they have something to gain from my being **Herald of Andraste?**_

Daphne clears her throat. “Oh, just the situation. The Templars want nothing to do with us, the mages are being their usual cryptic mage-y selves… I never know what to do, and they’re just making it worse.” _Not a lie, but definitely not the full scope of your issues. Nicely done._

Cullen nods and Cassandra huffs. “I understand what you mean. Do not worry – we’ll find a way.”

“We’d better, because I’m this close to just hurling myself at the Breach.”

Cullen snorts and Daphne’s heart does a sloppy backflip in her chest. _How dare you._

Daphne has a letter to burn and a pillow to cry into, so she salutes the pair before her. “As you were,” she says, and spins on her heel to march toward her cabin. Once in the gate she half-heartedly returns someone’s greeting with a wave in (hopefully) the direction it came from, and upon entering her cabin slams the door behind her. She sighs and leans against the door, letting her shoulders sag and her head roll back against the wood with a dull thud.

It takes several minutes of deep breaths and self-encouragement to lift herself off of the door and over to her desk, where the ever-imposing sheaf of paper mocks her. She breaks the seal with a barely trembling hand.

_Dearest Daffodil,_

_I hope this letter finds you well._

_In all honestly, I hope this letter finds you alive. It’s been two months since the explosion at the Temple of Sacred Ashes and four months since I’ve seen you, and neither I nor anyone else in the family have heard or seen any sign of you. Do you have any idea how worried I am – how worried Mama and Papa are?_

_I apologize, dear sister. I did not start this letter to lecture you. Regina ensures me that no news is good news, but imagine how worried I am. They say that only one survived – the Herald of Andraste – but no news has reached Ostwick regarding his or her appearance or name. This is the one time I wish gossip would travel fast._

_You should know Jamie’s recently become engaged. He’s found himself some perfectly boring fiancée to bring into the family. She’s pretty enough, and I truly wish I could find something to say, but her personality is so stale that hard tack would taste better and keep better company._

_I wish I could take credit for that, but Gina said it sometime last week and it’s such an accurate assessment of the poor dear that I can’t get it out of my head. Her name is Priscilla. How dreadful is that? She has deep coffers and her father is an Orlesian trader. You can see why Papa arranged it. Jamie doesn’t seem quite taken with her, but he also doesn’t seem to hate her. It could certainly be worse._

_Regina is doing well, her pregnancy progressing normally and without any unwelcome surprises. Sophia is so excited to be a big sister, she’s absolutely beside herself. Hector hopes for a little boy, but Regina and Sophia want it to be a girl. Could you imagine another houseful of women?_

_Claire is… Claire. Flirtatious as ever, breaking hearts left and right. I can’t imagine she’ll ever settle down, but you know how Mama is. She’ll never bring herself to send her off to the Chantry. I can’t help but worry that that big mouth of hers is going to land her in serious trouble with some Arl’s son, sooner or later._

_Papa misses you dearly. He regrets how you and Mama ended things before you left, and I’ve never seen him so withdrawn. If he’s not in the stables with the horses, he’s out in the garden staring across the sea. He’s eating less and Mama’s taken over running the estate for him, hopefully until we receive word from you._

_Please, at least for Papa’s sake, be alive._

_I miss you, my dear._

_All my love,  
Eliza_

_P.S. Mama had me include the miniature portrait with the letter. She said something about it serving as a reminder that no matter how far you travel, your home is still in Ostwick._

“Oh, of fucking course she did,” Daphne snarls, finding the family portrait rolled up behind another sheet of paper. Seven faces stare impassively back at her and she finds herself wishing dearly that she could summon the courage to burn it. It was painted nearly four years ago, right after she had turned nineteen. In the portrait she’s seated between her mother and father, as the youngest is customarily placed, and her brother James stands at her father’s left shoulder. Eliza and Claire are twins, so they _should_ have been placed together between James and Regina, but because Eliza is a mage and their mother is horrible, she is beyond dear Lady Evelyn’s right shoulder, far enough removed that there’s noticeable negative space between her and the rest of the family, leaving Regina and Claire to occupy the space above Daphne.

_No matter how far you travel, your home is still in Ostwick._

_Your leash._

Daphne sets the letter and portrait on the bed next to her leg and stares into the ground for a moment, processing everything Eliza had written. She hadn’t even considered how they might be feeling, never thought to send them an update. “Hello, it’s Daphne, the youngest and least important. I’m still alive.” She allows a moment of grim satisfaction at the idea of depriving her family the game piece they’d hoped she’d be, knowing full well that if the Conclave _hadn’t_ gone up in ash and smoke, and she _had_ gone back to Ostwick, that she’d immediately get sent to the Chantry, fated to a life of organizing libraries and scowling at Templars. Or flirting with them. She doesn’t seem to be too off base in her current situation, finding herself flirting and scowling at Cullen in equal measure.

Eliza’s neat scrawl stares benignly up at the ceiling and her heart lurches. Eliza is, by far, her closest sister both in age and affection. She’s only a year and a half older than her and Daphne considers her to be her closest, if not only friend. She, her brother, and her father were the only ones who bothered to see her off, escorting her to the docks and tearfully hugging her goodbye before her voyage to Ferelden. She didn’t regret the explosive verbal battle she’d undertaken with her mother, but she did regret how it affected her poor father, the best man in her life.

At least it was Liza who wrote her and not her mother. Daphne would likely have burnt the letter and carried on letting them think she was dead. She figures her mother asked Eliza to write it anyway, because she knows that Eliza and Daphne are the closest and Daphne’s guilt would force her into responding. _Well played, Mother._

Daphne rolls her eyes and trudges to her desk, pulling out her pen and paper only to realize she has no ink. Growling, she launches herself out of the chair that she had _just_ lowered herself into and files out of the cabin door, bearing straight for Cullen. As it just so happens, she runs directly into his chest, likely bruising her face on the edge of his chest plate. He catches her and places her a respectable distance away, so she may sputter and blush freely. At least at this point, she can make it look like she _wasn’t_ seeking him out just to ask him for ink.

“Lady Trevelyan,” he rushes to say, eyeing her with concern, as she catches her breath and coaxes her heart into resuming a normal rhythm.

“Were you about to come see me?” she asks incredulously. Cullen blushes slightly and her chest warms.

“Well, I… ah.” His hand shoots up to rub at his neck, a sign that he’s either nervous or frustrated. Daphne smiles slightly. “Yes. You rescheduled yesterday’s training session for this afternoon, and—”

Daphne closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. _Of course, idiot._ “Right. Well, I need to postpone until this evening,” she says, leaning against the outer wall of the cabin. Cullen huffs.

“Are you serious, Lady Herald?”

“You know how I feel about that title.”

“Forgive me, sometimes it slips.” She waves him off.

“Do you have ink?”

Her blunt question seems to throw him off and he staggers slightly. “Ink?”

“Yes. For writing.”

“I bloody well know what ink is for,” he snaps, turning on his heel. She giggles and follows him.

“I apologize, Commander. I’m glad your Templar training was good for at least knowing what ink is for. As it stands, you didn’t answer me. Do you have ink?”

“Why do you need it?” he asks, flushing slightly, and Daphne can’t help herself.

“For writing.”

Cullen stops and levels her with a deadly glare, but Daphne is grinning broadly up at him and she thinks she sees his lips twitch. She throws him a bone.

“One of my sisters wrote me. I’d like to write back.”

“ _One_ of your sisters?” he asks, brow raised.

“I have three. And a brother.”

“Your poor brother,” he mutters, turning back towards his tent. She resumes following.

“Do _you_ have sisters?”

“Two. And a brother.”

“Ah. Your poor sisters,” she teases, and Cullen snorts. He disappears into his tent a moment and returns with a pot of ink.

“Try not to spill it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Daphne says, sniffing haughtily. Cullen chuckles.

“Recall the report from Val Royeaux, where the bottom third of the paper was barely legible.”

“I like to think the ink stain reflects my opinion of Val Royeaux. The whole lot can eat it.” Cullen laughs again, and Daphne feels an annoying buzz in her fingers. She wants to wrap herself up in his laugh. She plucks the bottle from his hand and hesitates, nails tapping against the cork lid. He seems to sense a question between them.

“Was there something else?”

 _Why are you so handsome? How did you get the scar on your lip? What are the Inquisition’s rules on fraternization? How old are you?_ “Why don’t you sleep in the Chantry like the other leaders?” _Smooth._

Cullen frowns, clearly not expecting this new line of questioning. “I don’t sleep well at night,” he admits. “Besides, it’s good for morale to see the Commander living amongst his troops.”

Daphne nods, satisfied with the answer. “That’s fair.” She steps away, tossing the bottle between her hands, when she misses a catch and it sails a few paces away and lands with a dull poof in the snow.

“What did I _just_ say?” Cullen groans, and Daphne smiles sunnily.

“That didn’t happen. Thank you for the ink!” He rolls his eyes and waves her off.

Daphne returns to her desk and sinks back onto the chair, uncorking the ink pot and dipping her pen. She starts the letter with her favorite salutation for her favorite sister:

_Darling Lizard,_

_First of all, I want to start by saying I am so, deeply, truly, unequivocally, sorry._

_I am alive. Well… at the time I’m writing this letter, I’m alive._

_On another note, I also feel it’s worth mentioning that I’m the Herald of Andraste._

_Do me a favor and collect yourself from the heap of skirts into which you have fallen on the floor and read again: I am the Herald of Andraste. Nobody knows how it happened. I was at the Conclave, I suppose, and there was an explosion, so I’ve heard, and then I stepped out of some sort of rift in the Fade with a creepy mark that can close said Fade rifts, and people seem to be calling me the Herald of Andraste. Also the Champion of the Bride. Also the Chosen One._

_If I can be frank, I have no idea what I’m doing. Half the Chantry wants me dead, and the other half believe me to be some messiah. I know how religious you are and you’ll probably believe this is providence, but I just feel as if I was in the wrong place at the right time. I don’t have your grace. I don’t have Regina’s fortitude or Claire’s optimism. This isn’t supposed to be my destiny. I’m supposed to be lighting candles in a Chantry, hoping for some noble lord to come along and spirit me away to Nevarra or Antiva. Instead I’m here, fighting bears and demons and pulling things out of my arse as I go._

_Regina’s baby will probably have been born by now, and I do hope it’s a boy. This branch of the family sorely needs some testosterone._

_Tell Claire to keep her hands to herself. I’m officially the only one allowed to bring scandal to the family name, though I just **know** that Mother will find a way to turn this ordeal into a boon. _

_I’m also eagerly awaiting the day I get to meet my new sister-in-law Priscilla, so I can see just how dull she truly is. I hope she can at least ride (a horse) if she’s to have any standing in this family. Does she know she’s marrying into the most important branch of our name? Is she not even slightly terrified? Even without Mother at the helm, we’re still quite intimidating. I do agree, however. The name Priscilla is horrible. I will not regret missing that wedding._

_Tell me how you are. Are you still studying those advanced healing techniques? Have Papa or Jamie taken you to Markham at **all**? _

_Tell Papa I’m sorry. I do truly regret how distant I’ve been since I left. The new weight of this responsibility has me focused on little other than the Inquisition. I do not know when I’ll be able to return, as the threat we face is far graver than we had ever anticipated. I’m also sorry for how I left him – I know he has little bearing in how Mother plays her game lately. It’s not his fault._

_I hope to hear from you as soon as this great distance allows._

_I miss you terribly,  
Your Daffodil_


	5. Bambi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevelyan bonds with some of her companions and receives a new nickname... which she resents.

_Lady Montilyet:_

_I’ve acquired the services of Bull’s Chargers, the relatively well known mercenary company that contacted me upon returning from Val Royeaux. Upon reviewing their performance in the field and fighting alongside them, I believe they’ll make a valuable addition to the Inquisition._

_As they are a mercenary group, they’ll be requiring payment… I trust that you can take care of that._

_I promise they’re worth it._

_Faithfully,_

_Trevelyan_

* * *

“He is…”

“ _Huge.”_

“Gigantic.”

“Makes you wonder…”

Daphne’s train of thought is cut off with a harsh shove from the elf standing at her side. “Nasty!” she crows, cackling at Daphne’s flaming cheeks.

Daphne rubs at her forearm and scowls across the waves, willing the fire in her face to dissipate. Hopefully their newest recruit hadn’t heard hers and Sera’s conversation. “You’re never going to drop this, are you?”

“Never,” Sera pronounces, reaching to tug at Daphne’s braid. She elbows her away and trudges along the coast, scouting for more spindleweed.

She likes Sera. She’s irreverent and refreshing. Her habit of compartmentalizing offers a fresh perspective to issues Daphne might otherwise agonize over, and they seem to read each other well. For someone so tempestuous, Sera has quickly learned when to rein it in around Daphne – sometimes all she needs is a comforting, nonjudgmental presence, and if Daphne hasn’t shoved her head too far up her ass, it’s an easy role for Sera to fill.

She also likes to think that Sera might be the little sister she never got to have, being the youngest in her family.

“So,” Sera says, picking through pebbles and collecting shards of sea glass, “What’s the plan with this Hessarian lot?”

“When Tess finishes the crest, we’ll ride up there and try to talk them down.”

“And if that goes sideways?”

“Bees.”

“Brilliant.”

* * *

_Lady Trevelyan,_

_Your recruiting of Blackwall into the Inquisition was a smart move, and the information you recovered about Warden activity along the coast has opened some interesting leads. I have agents investigating in all corners of Ferelden. Keep up the good work._

_As for the Bull’s Chargers… Josephine will be speaking to you upon your return._

_-L_

* * *

Blackwall is quiet.

They’d picked him up on the way to the Storm Coast, doing a favor for Leliana and checking a lead in the Hinterlands. He’s quiet, rugged, Varric might describe him as weathered or surly, and he wouldn’t be wrong, but there’s a shroud of melancholy around the man that defies proper description. Still, he does his job with little complaint and speaks like any soldier – very little about himself, but often ready with a story about someone else… someone he served with either in the army or the Wardens, or someone he grew up with, or a story he’d heard in a tavern somewhere. He reminds Daphne of one of her father’s brothers, the one who’d been promised to the Chantry (much like she had) but hadn’t taken a shine to the Templar Order and instead joined the Wardens. He always had a knee for her to perch on and some trinket hidden in his coat, before he followed his Calling to the Deep Roads.

Blackwall is solid and sure. If she looks long enough, she convinces herself that he’s handsome. Not in the way Cullen is handsome, with high cheekbones and shrewd eyes, but he is. His eyes are blue, but somehow darkened, holding some of the melancholy that tugs at her heart. But they’re also warm, like fertile earth. His accent is a welcome reminder of home and his hands are wide and rough.

“Do you miss Ostwick?” he asks once, as she fiddles with an astrarium they’d found on a hilltop. She pauses.

“Sometimes. Here, I do. When the breeze blows in my direction and I can smell the salt in the air, or if I close my eyes and listen to the waves.” She returns to the astrarium and feels him watching her, as if trying to piece her together, deciding if she’s someone he can trust. Like everyone else. “The beach is different there. Sandy.”

“I remember.”

“You’ve been to Ostwick?”

“A few times, in my travels. Lovely little city.”

She smiles fondly. “I’d think so.”

The astrarium clicks into place and a beam of light shoots into the interior of the forest. They share a pleased look.

“When don’t you miss Ostwick?”

“When I think about going back,” she answers easily.

“You don’t have to go back,” he says. She shrugs. She knows she doesn’t, but there’s a part of her that believes she does – that when her job is done and the Breach is closed, the mark on her hand will fade to an odd little scar and she’ll be shooed off back across the sea to light candles in a Chantry for the rest of her life.

“I hope I don’t,” she replies, careful to conceal the gloom from her voice, but she knows that Blackwall picks up on it. The pat on her shoulder is meant to be reassuring, but it sinks her further into the soggy ground.

* * *

_Trevelyan:_

_Do_ not _engage that dragon._

- _CR_

* * *

When Daphne complains that she can’t see downhill, the last thing she expects is for the Iron Bull to hoist her onto his shoulder.

She’s not about to complain, though. His shoulders are broad and solid under her thighs and his hand on her shin anchors her when he begins carrying her onward.

Once, she knocks on a horn and asks if he can feel it. He grunts.

“About the same as if you knocked on my skull.”

She knocks again. “Does it annoy you?”

“Try it again and we’ll see where your ass lands.” She snickers, but keeps her hands to herself.

After a pause, she asks him to describe Par Vollen.

“Why?” he asks.

“I want to know. I’ve never been farther north than Ansburg.”

“Wet.”

“Like the Storm Coast?”

He hums, and she can feel it reverberate through his chest and into her calves.

“No. It’s more humid there. Warmer. This is cold rain.”

“Do you like it here?” she asks. He shrugs as well as he can with a human woman on his shoulders. He intuits the second layer in her question: _here, in the Inquisition._

“That remains to be seen.”

Daphne taps at his bicep urgently, cutting off his following remark. “Bear. Put me down.” He swings her off his shoulders and pulls the axe from his back, charging the bear with a roar. Fighting bears is tolerable when a Qunari fronts most of the damage.

* * *

_Commander,_

_Don’t worry. Cassandra wouldn’t let us near it._

_All we wanted was to watch. It was fighting a bloody giant._

_Spoilsport._

_-DT_

* * *

They’re on the road back to Haven, somewhere around the northern banks of Lake Calenhad, when they take a break to rest their horses and set up camp before it’s dark. All in all, the trip to the Storm Coast bore promising results – she’s returning with new men and new agents on the coast, as well as a large cache of spindleweed and blood lotus for Adan’s experimental grenade recipes. She looks forward to going onto the lake and testing them with him.

She’s grown restless at camp, the sun barely beginning to sink behind the trees, so she ventures into the woods, Varric not far behind her. He tells her some stories of his misadventures with Hawke and she tells him less interesting stories of the mischief she got up to around Ostwick, but the farther from camp they retreat, the more antsy Varric gets. The light is failing and Daphne hardly notices, eyes trained on the ground to look for stalks of elfroot or embrium blooms. She finds a fiery blossom tucked between two roots of a tree and crouches, digging around the stalk to find its bulb. He watches with mild interest for a moment before a breeze rustles their hair and he shivers.

“Are we done here, Bambi?”

Daphne snaps her head up to Varric, who’s watching her with a mixture of impatience and amusement. “Did you just call me Bambi?”

He shrugs.

“The little deer from that Marcher fairy tale?” She frowns down at the embrium bulb she’d been digging up, determined to pot it and take it back to Haven with them. Its roots give way with a snap and she stands, the bulb cradled protectively in her hands. “I thought you were calling me Fox.”

“You fight like one,” he concedes, rolling his shoulders. Beyond him, she finds Cassandra and Solas surveying a map of the region. “But you act like a Bambi.” She abandons the flower and stands, crossing her arms with a pout. He grins and points at her face. “Bambi.”

“I resent this.” She marches after him as he turns over his shoulder, rejoining Cassandra and Solas.

“What do you resent?” Cassandra asks, arching a brow at Varric.

“Her name. Bambi.”

“That fawn from the Nevarran fairy tales?” Daphne and Varric share a glance.

“No, Marcher.”

Cassandra tsks at them. “I’m certain it’s a Nevarran story.”

“Wherever it’s from,” Daphne says crossly, leaving Varric with an open mouth and a superior finger hanging in the air, “I am _not_ a Bambi.” She looks to Solas for help but he gives her a placid shrug, clearly unfamiliar with regional fairy tales. Cassandra scans the tree line with marked interest, avoiding Daphne’s pleading gaze, and the girl stalks through the group and back towards camp. She sits on a felled log and tucks her knees under her chin, the embrium stalk wilting at her feet. Blackwall nods to her from his stool where he’s knocking dents out of his shield with a small mallet.

“Why’re you poutin’?” Sera calls from across camp, twirling an arrow between nimble fingers. Daphne glares at her from her knees and kicks a rock.

“She’s unhappy with the dwarf’s nickname for her,” Solas pronounces easily, slipping into camp behind Varric and Cassandra. Sera quirks an eyebrow.

“Let’s hear it then.”

“I decided she’s Bambi,” Varric says matter-of-factly, as if he were announcing the weather or the wetness of water. Sera grins broadly and abandons the arrow to flounce next to Daphne on the log, nudging her with her shoulder.

“The baby roe from that Fereldan fairy tale?” Cassandra huffs.

“It’s Nevarran –”

“It’s Marcher!”

“It’s perfect,” Sera says with finality.

Daphne makes a disgusted noise in her throat and stares into the low flame in the fire pit. “I am… the Herald of Andraste,” she pronounces lamely. Varric salutes her with a sarcastic flourish, knowing as well as she does that she hates that name and calling upon it now is a feeble attempt at winning her a better nickname. She recognizes that she’s behaving like the runt puppy of the litter… or perhaps a knock-kneed fawn.

“You _are_ the youngest one here,” Cassandra says, hiding a smile. Daphne jabs a thumb in Sera’s direction.

“She’s twenty!”

“Yeah, but she’s got at least six years on you growing up in the Denerim alienage and working for the Jennies. You’re the youngest of your family and have never traveled farther than Ansburg. You also chase wild animals through the forest so you can befriend them,” Varric says. “Is that not how you literally ran into Blackwall? Chasing an orange ram?”

“He was pretty,” she mutters. Blackwall’s mustache wobbles, but he remains silent.

“Yeah, and not to mention how many times _per day_ you fall. Just walking. Not doing anything important. Walking.”

Daphne blushes scarlet to the tips of her ears.

“I don’t have to take this,” she mutters, rising from the log and stalking to her tent. She trips on her own boot and rather thinks the ground should swallow her whole, but when she opens her eyes her party is watching her with varying degrees of amusement. Sera is laughing outright.

She throws open her tent flap and stomps inside, hoping they don’t notice that she trips on her bed roll in the dark. She refuses to think it’s cute, no matter how many valid reasons they throw her way. She also refuses to admit that it feels nice to have a name, to feel included within the Inquisition, to maybe have a home here.

_This is my life now,_ she thinks glumly, curling into her bedroll and wriggling her blanket out from under her so she can drape it over her body. She realizes dimly that she left her trampled embrium bulb wilting by the fire, and to sneak off now for a new one would only provoke more relentless teasing.

She can get it in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive, y'all! This is short and relatively filler and for that I apologize. It's been a rough couple of weeks. 
> 
> If you want to hang out with me online I have lots of discussion and a few drabbles up on Tumblr!
> 
> [ **follow me here!** ](lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com)


	6. Younger and Different

It’s late when they finally gather around the war table. Cullen’s been kept busy securing supply lines to the refugees in the Southron Hills, Leliana’s people have been investigating every rock in the Fallow Mire, and Josephine has been up to her teeth in complaints and requests from visiting dignitaries.

On top of ramping up his soldiers’ training and teaching his lieutenants battle strategy and leadership skills, he’s also been weaning himself off of lyrium, stretching the time between doses as well as tapering the doses week by week.

Twice a week now, and a quarter of the dose he used as a Templar. His next dose isn’t scheduled for another two days and he’s been battling the worst migraine he’s had to date. His hands itch for the box at the bottom of his trunk and a nerve between his shoulder blades pinches.

He knows he’s not helping himself by running himself ragged and barely sleeping. He knows he should sleep more and eat a full meal. He’s noticed his muscles losing mass and his skin drawing tighter across his bones in some places. He’s as disappointed as Cassandra would be if he’d bother to tell her, but he doesn’t. And he won’t. Not while he can still manage four or five hours of sleep a night and keep down _most_ of his meals. Not while there’s an army to put together and a breach to close.

He endures.

Cullen lifts his eyes from the war table when Leliana and Josephine enter, the former reading through a report in her hand. The Herald and her party have been investigating Inquisition disappearances along the Storm Coast for the past week, and it’s likely that they’ve departed for Haven by now.

“News?” he asks by way of greeting, and Josephine slips next to him and ponders the Orlesian side of the table. Leliana frowns slightly and wordlessly hands the report over. It’s definitely from the Herald.

_Leliana,_

_We’re skirting down the western edge of Lake Calenhad to follow any shred of evidence of a Warden presence at the base of the Frostbacks. We’ve also received your reports of rifts in the area and will close them off as we come across them. The weather at the lake’s northern shore is mild, but I’m told to expect worse weather as we make our way south. This may impede our progress by a day or so._

_Final report of our dealings along the Storm Coast:_

_Found the agents. They’d been killed by this organization that calls themselves the Blades of Hessarian. Rather than engaging them head on, we challenged the leader and the Blades now work for the Inquisition._

_We’ve also found evidence of Grey Warden activity in the area, but all signs indicate that they’ve moved on. No sign of Darkspawn at the moment, so I have no idea why they were here to begin with. I’ll bring what I found when we return._

_The rifts in the region have been closed. We should monitor the dragon situation here carefully, however._

_Faithfully,  
Daphne Trevelyan_

Cullen’s hand drops to his side and he frowns. “The western bank of the lake,” he says, blinking down at the map. A small Dwarven coin marks the surface entrance to Orzammar and he tries to work out what that might mean for the Herald and her party beyond bandits, the potential threat of lone darkspawn escaping from fissures in the Deep Roads, and surface dwarves with outrageous markups on any gear they might need to buy.

“Could they be recruiting surface dwarves?” Josephine asks of the Wardens. Leliana frowns.

“The Blight ended ten years ago, so there’s little need to invoke the Right of Conscription. The Warden-Commander rebuilt her ranks in the years following from willing recruits, but they’re disappearing now. Warden Blackwall has no idea why.”

Cullen blanches.

“Wardens have been disappearing?” He knows she’s told him this, he’s read the reports, but he can’t grasp the memory. It’s infuriating.

Leliana pauses. “Yes… the reports are preliminary, but accurate. What troubles me is that I can’t seem to get a hold of Alistair, or…”

“Surana.”

“Yes.”

Cullen sighs deeply as the image of a young Selene Surana flickers to life behind his eyelids. A flash of black hair and silver eyes, gone just as quickly as she had appeared. The pinch in his shoulder tightens.

“She’s just disappeared?” he asks. Leliana looks disturbed.

“For some time, and I’ve been aware. Alistair and I keep occasional correspondence. He mentioned some time ago that she left on a personal mission, but wouldn’t say what she was doing or where she was going. His last letter came several months ago and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Whatever development, it’s recent.”

“Doesn’t he take up the mantle if she’s attending to other business?” Josephine asks. Cullen braces his fists on the table and swallows down a round of beef stew threatening its way back up his throat. If the two can sense his malaise, they make no indication of it.

Leliana makes a scoffing sound and sneers in her delicate, Orlesian way. “Alistair couldn’t lead his way out of a burning burlap sack. I’ve a great fondness for him,” she reassures at Josephine’s scandalized expression, “but it’s true. No, he said that the Fereldan wardens, such as they were, deferred to the Orlesian Commander, Clarel.”

“And have we attempted reaching _her_?” Cullen asks, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. The candlelight is doubling and quadrupling every time he blinks.

“Yes. No response.”

The three sigh in unison.

“Could your agents locate her? Surana, I mean.”

“We don’t have the resources. She was our first choice as Inquisitor, remember?” Cullen rubs the knot at the back of his neck.

“Ah. Right.” Leliana pins him with an uncomfortable stare.

Josephine interrupts. “Is this the priority?” she asks, head swiveling between the two. “We need help closing the Breach, first and foremost. It is pure speculation whether the Wardens disappearing is connected to the Breach.”

“You’re right. The Herald should rest a few days and move towards Redcliffe.” Cullen’s chest tightens and his ears ring slightly.

“I still think the Templars would be a better choice,” he warns, his words once again falling on deaf ears.

“Cullen, we’re not about to have this argument again. We don’t know for sure that they _can_ negate the magic.”

“And we’re not certain that any degree of magic poured _into_ the Breach won’t magnify it one hundredfold!” He jabs a finger into the war table as Leliana massages her temples. His voice drops and he leans in, partly for emphasis, but mostly for the support of the table. “The risk is too great. I’ve seen it firstha—”

“Don’t victimize yourself,” Leliana spits. “You had the power to _stop it_ at Kirkwall, but you stood there… you let them –”

“I know what I did.” His voice is quiet and deadly steel, and both Leliana and Josephine flinch. “I know. What I did. And every day I have to wake from my nightmares of what I did and didn’t do. What I allowed to happen. And every day…” the ghosts of burning flesh and faint screaming echo in his senses and his knees nearly buckle, but he clenches his jaw and closes his eyes against the thrumming in his veins. _Need it._ “Every day I must atone for my sins.” Leliana simply folds her arms across her chest, too stubborn to apologize, and Josephine gives him a pitying look. Cullen scowls, his temples throbbing. _Need it._ He moves around the table and tilts his chin at them.

“We’re done for now. Let the Herald decide.” His step falters – _need it ­_ – as he strides through the Chantry proper, eyes following him as he’s positive his voice carried through the stone. He can’t bring himself to care. He’s grateful for the late hour and the dark blanket of sky above him easing the transition from the dark Chantry to the biting cold of the village. His feet move on autopilot to the soldiers’ camp.

His veins are stinging with thirst, tongue sandpaper in his mouth, his vision blurry. His jaw is tense with how hard and how often he’s been grinding his teeth.

He needs Cassandra. He needs a distraction. He needs…

_Silver and black, a gentle smile, stacks of books taller than she is._

He blinks the memory away, but another flickers in.

_Pale. Pale and trembling in his arms, exhausted and beautiful and no longer an apprentice, but an enchanter, successfully Harrowed._

_“…Cullen?” Of course she wakes up when he’s still carrying her. He nearly drops her, can’t trust his voice not to crack, so he looks at her and nods._

_“It… it was a Pride demon.” She pauses, shifts in his arms. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.”_

_It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to watch, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. He keeps the image of her—hand frozen over a bowl of lyrium, eyes glassy and mouth slack—to himself. Cullen still doesn’t speak._

_“I’m glad you didn’t have to kill me.”_

_“So am I.”_

Cullen stares at his recruits without watching, the clash of steel echoing in an empty head.

_There are tears in her eyes as she approaches. She tugs at an ear lobe – a nervous gesture – and stops in front of him without knowing what to say. She struggles to find words and fidgets with the sleeves of her robes._

_“I heard about Jowan,” he says coolly, leaning against the wall outside the apprentice quarters. She grimaces._

_“I didn’t know what else to do. I wish I could have helped them.”_

_He bites his tongue, refrains from telling her that blood magic is no excuse, that she’s too nice for her own good. He just watches her and wonders if perhaps he was wrong about her all along._

_“Something you needed?” She pauses, looks him over._

_“I’m leaving.”_

_“With Duncan?” he asks, his stomach dropping into his feet._

_Instead of answering she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a button, closes her hands around it and closes her eyes. Her hands glow briefly and when she uncurls her fingers, a glass robin rests in her palms. She holds it out for him._

_“They’re giving me an hour to gather my things and say goodbye. You and Jowan were my only friends here.” He takes the robin and closes his hand around it so nobody sees it and she looks up and down the empty corridor before rising up onto her toes and kissing him, just below the corner of his mouth. His hand twitches, he wants to keep her there, but she steps back and doesn’t stop the tears from falling._

_“Be careful, Cullen.”_

He swallows hard around a dry throat and makes his way to his tent.

Memories of Kinloch’s downfall comes in fragments, for which he’s grateful. He sits on the edge of his cot and fights them off, but she slips through – of course she does.

_Her shock and pity as she rushes forth to rescue him, her staff clattering to the ground_

_The hurt in her face when he assumes her to be a demon and the almost immediate comfort of a foreign hand at her shoulder, pulling her back_

_Wynne pronouncing that there’s nothing to be done yet_

_The steel in her eyes when he begs her to kill them all_

_After: she won’t look at him, allows the boy at her side to wipe the blood and ichor off her face, out of her hair as she decides what to do with the broken Circle, smiles when he murmurs something just for her to hear, rewards him with a wobbly laugh and it’s a slam to his gut_

_She’s not the girl he watched grow up here. She’s different and better and she’s moved on and he’s broken_

Cullen growls at the memory and does his best to ignore the throbbing in his head. The itch of addiction is dulled by the sudden aching loneliness in his heart brought on by the onslaught of very unwelcome memories. He’s had his share of dalliances between his years in the Gallows and its proximity to that damn brothel, but never have any of those courtesans or young Templar recruits had any effect on him like Surana had.

Quick to smile, always helping, constantly flowing around him and flirting in her gentle way, pulling him deeper until he was sure he was drowning, until the illusion shattered and she walked out of the circle and out of his life. With the spell broken and her gone it was clear that he had never been in love with her, perhaps only the idea of her, the idea that this beautiful, kind girl could be a mage, could be the exception to the rule, but in the end she chose her people and left him haunted and scarred for over a decade.

He shouldn’t blame her. It’s unfair to her.

It helps to, though. To put a face to the night that started the worst part of his life. Every draught of lyrium, every nightmare, it was her face swimming behind his eyes for the longest time, judging him and his weakness. Every night it was him failing her, darkness eclipsing the haunting silver of her eyes.

The sound of footsteps crunching in the snow forces him to sit up. A rustle of canvas, and Leliana pokes her head in. He is not in the mood for this argument.

Neither is she, it seems, for she simply crouches in and offers a folded parchment. Her eyes are contrite, he notices, but her lips are pressed into a thin line. “You left before I could give this to you.” Cullen takes the letter and reads his name in the center of the folded page, scrawled hurriedly in Daphne’s now familiar handwriting. He resists the urge to smile and looks up at Leliana.

“Thank you,” he says, and she nods once and turns on her heel. He feels like he should apologize for his outburst, but she’s gone before he can open his mouth. With a resigned sigh, he turns his attention to the slightly soggy letter in his hands.

_Cullen:_

_You’ll be pleased to know that we escaped the Storm Coast with no dragon in sight._

_Perhaps that’s not a good thing, because that means it could be anywhere._

_Hopefully you’ll have read the final report and you know that we’re detouring around the western side of Lake Calenhad. I had heard it’s snowier than the eastern side and suggested splitting up so I could be selfish and avoid the Frostbacks, but was politely reminded that I’m the only one who can close the rifts._

_I hate snow. If you could kindly use your Commander powers to clear the snow from Haven before my return, I’d be forever in your debt. Or perhaps your Templar abilities? I have it on good authority that snow is an abomination on par with blood magic._

_Perhaps I’m being dramatic. I look forward to my return and my bed._

_Yours in Service,  
DT_

* * *

Daphne’s party rides into Haven two days later at twilight, and Cullen is surprised and a little worried to see a sour look on her face as she rides past the soldiers’ camp to the stables to deposit her horse. Is this something he should look into, he thinks, chancing a glance at the rest of her party members, whose faces range from neutral to amused to smug. Perhaps something happened at the Herald’s expense to warrant the rain cloud hanging over her and her alone. Whatever the matter, he wants nothing to do with it.

Thankfully, she doesn’t approach him when the path leads her towards the village gate. She glances in his direction, watches the troops moving around him, and then considers turning right into the village proper, but decides against it and continues straight, beyond Lysette’s tent and into the tree line. If she’s seeking out her abandoned cabin, she doesn’t want to be found. Sera and Varric follow along paces behind her, the latter meeting Cullen’s eyes and correctly interpreting a question in the set of his brows. He leaves the elf at the gate and sidles up to where Cullen stands.

“What have you two done to her?” he asks, much in the way his father would ask him and his brother when their youngest sister tattled on them.

Varric smirks. “Aw, Bambi’s just mad at her nickname. She’ll come around.”

“The name of that little deer in the Fereldan fairy tales?”

Varric sighs. “No matter who you talk to they try to claim it as their own,” he mutters, turning on his heel and leaving Cullen to his thoughts.

He has three more exercises to run through with his troops, but the urge to check on her is itching in his palms, and so he turns to a lieutenant and tells him to set up a sparring circle and have a tournament.

As he disappears into the tree line, he runs the name over in his head. _Bambi._

It’s appropriate—almost painfully so, and he thinks part of Daphne’s vehement rejection of the name is a bit of wounded pride, because it might confirm her insecurities that she doesn’t quite belong yet, and it’s written in her every move. She has a role here but no niche, she goes where she’s told and closes the rifts that need closing and fetches information and brokers deals with agents. She might see the name as a reminder that she is lost, a child who doesn’t quite know how to navigate the forest independently, who still leans on Cassandra for advice or throws Cullen helpless, pleading looks across the war table when Josephine asks her an important question.

Bambi.

It’s also a reminder that in the midst of this war, the breach oozing that sickly green across the sky, she is still _good_. She still gets excited when she explores someplace new. She’d rather chase dragons or collect herbs or knit a bloody scarf for someone than kill the people he and Leliana tell her to kill. He sighs as he stops in front of the door to the cabin. He’s part of the problem.

He’s been too busy seeing her as a tool, a means to an end, both with the breach and as a welcome distraction to the dry pounding in his head. He needs to amend that immediately.

He knocks on the door and studies the wood grain before it opens inward and her face appears. He realizes with a start that her hair is down for the first time since he’d met her and the thick wave of deep golden brown framing her face puts her eyes into sharp relief, making them greener than he remembers them being. He swallows hard.

“Cullen,” she greets with a smile, running a hand through her thick hair. He swallows again, his palms tightening.

“Are you alright?” he asks. She sighs, her smile slipping.  

“I suppose I am.” She steps outside and shuts the door behind her. “I’m just tired.” They begin walking and she leads him off the path and into the trees.

“I heard about your nickname,” he says. She shoots him a look.

“Right. _Bambi._ ”

She crosses her arms and looks like she’s chasing down a thought, so he remains silent and plucks a pine needle from a branch. If he were younger or if they were closer, he’d stick it in her hair, but he’s nearly thirty and she’s… far too many things that would make it impossible to pursue, so he pokes at his gloved finger with the tip of the pine needle and lets the Line of Propriety settle in the snow between them.

“I suppose it’s alright,” she concedes. “It means Varric likes me, doesn’t it?”

“Varric liked you the second you fell through the Fade and into our laps. You suddenly made everything far too interesting.”

She giggles slightly and his heart warms at the sound.

“I find it fitting,” he says, and she gives him a wounded look. “It’s… cute.” The word falls from his mouth before he can catch it and he instantly regrets it.

Suddenly her cheeks are the loveliest shade of pink he’s ever seen and her lips are curling into a small smile, and if he were younger or if they were closer he’d close the gap and kiss the pretty smile right off her lips, but she is she and he is he, so Cullen clears his throat and finds sudden interest in a pine cone dangling off a branch. _Maker take me._

“You think—”

“How did you like the Storm Coast?” he says abruptly, thanking every entity in every pantheon that his voice didn’t crack, because when his eyes slide over to her she is _still_ watching him with bright cheeks and that damn smile.

She swallows down whatever it is she was prepared to tease him with and nods. “It was… slippery.” He chuckles, and the brief flirtation has ended, the Line is satisfied, and their tenuous, wobbling relationship as Herald and Commander has settled for the moment. “And it reminded me of home, a bit.”

“Slippery?”

Her laugh breaks the clouds open. “Not nearly so. Ostwick has sand beaches and plenty of orchards and not nearly as much rain.”

“Does your father have orchards?” he asks. She nods and he entertains the idea of her perched in a tree, sketching the branches or reading bawdy poetry.

“No dragons, though,” she laments.

“I am glad Cassandra was able to keep you from instigating a fight with a dragon.”

“The dragon was already fighting a giant. It would hardly have noticed if we got close enough to simply _watch_.”

“Be that as it may,” Cullen concedes drily, “I’m still glad you made it back to Haven in one piece.” He looks down to find her scrutinizing him carefully.

“Were you worried about me?” A hint of flirtation in her voice.

 _I always am,_ a voice in his head groans, but he pulls a face and shrugs noncommittally. “Hardly. I have no doubt in your abilities. I just… know we have many more pressing matters ahead of us – ” he notices her eyes slide behind his head to where the clouds churn green, a scowl on her face – “and I wonder if you don’t push yourself too far sometimes.”

She sighs, a hand twining in the ends of her hair. He wonders if it’s a nervous habit.

“Of course. Perhaps when the breach is sealed I can pick all the fights with dragons I want.”

He sighs. It had been a slip, he hadn’t chosen his words carefully, and her quick retreat is proof of what he’d suspected.

“My lady… that isn’t what I meant,” he says, stopping short in front of her and putting a hand on her shoulder. She frowns into his breastplate.

“It is, and I understand.” Her attempt at a smile pulls her mouth into a grimace. She rolls her shoulder and his hand falls, but she makes no move to leave, simply turns and continues their ambling pace through the trees.

“I do worry about you,” he admits quietly, and Daphne turns, her arms crossed. “You’re getting stronger every day and you’re good at what you do. I know I have no reason to, but I _do._ ” Her eyes soften and she steps forward slowly. “And don’t think for a second that all you are to this cause is a means to an end.” He closes his eyes and counts his breaths.

When he opens his eyes she’s impossibly close, the perfume of her soap washing over him. She smells like embrium and sage.

Of his own volition and against his better judgment, his hand reaches up to finger a lock of her hair, curling it around his thumb. “Your hair is much longer than I first thought.” He’s so entranced with the streaks of gold in the sunset that he doesn’t see her eyes gleam.

“The braids were giving me a headache,” she admits.

“ _You_ give me a headache.” She snickers and pretends to brush lint off the fur of his surcoat. The air between them shifts, suddenly urgent, and he realizes now that they’re leaning into each other. It would take half a step. His hand would slide to her neck, cradle at the base of her head, and she would, Maker willing, step into his embrace, slide her hand from his shoulder to his cheek, rise onto her toes and –

She’s staring at his mouth. Her eyes are glowing in the failing light beneath heavy lids, and neither of them are breathing. If there were ever a time to seize the opportunity to kiss her, now would definitely be it, between the trees and away from the noise of the village, but he’s not a schoolboy and he thinks of the possible ramifications.

She doesn’t, though. She is a fawn on trembling legs and she steps right over the Line between them and presses her lips to his, soft and sweet like sunlight on his shoulders. He’s too shocked to react, merely flutters his eyes closed and keeps the lock of hair wrapped around his thumb, and she takes his stillness for something it’s not and steps back to search his face.

She finds consequences and rules and excuses in his eyes so she exhales a huff of disappointment, blinks rapidly for a moment and steps away, not looking past his knees. A thick flush of embarrassment sweeps down into her collar and she fidgets.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, “I shouldn’t have done that. I… misread the situation.”

Cullen struggles to find the words, knows that nothing he could say would placate the angry flush of her cheeks. “Daph-”

“Forget it happened,” she says. “It can stay with the trees.” She turns over her shoulder and weaves out of the tree stand with her head tucked, past his camp and into the village, and Cullen is left in the snow with his pounding heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn't resist. Chapter seven will probably be a while anyway. Hope you enjoyed it and as always, you can find me [on tumblr](http://www.lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com).


	7. Fight Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne devises a way to work out her frustrations, much to Cullen's displeasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> forgive me my absence. i wrote this chapter like 3 weeks ago and lost it when my laptop died because autosave wasn't working, and I finally got un-mad enough to revisit it. Any typos are because I was tired of looking at this.

Daphne spends the following week avoiding Cullen like she was born to do it.

Sera, mercifully, picks up on Daphne’s misery without needing to be told anything, and Daphne is grateful that she doesn’t need to tell her what happened among the pines. Instead of pestering her about the source of her sudden quiet, Sera keeps Daphne distracted – they set up targets across from the stables and take turns honing their archery skills and working on throwing blade technique. They also set up a riding target course around the frozen pond, so they can work on mounted attacks. It devolves into a game, as it always will with Sera, and they have entirely too much fun, their cackles echoing across the icy pond and through the trees.

She wishes it would be enough to chase away her misery, but it comes back before long.

One night, Blackwall joins her by the fire in the lower part of the village and presses a block of wood and a small knife into her hand.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asks, and he shrugs.

“Cut away from yourself and try not to slice a finger off.”

Daphne does her best to follow Blackwall’s lead. At the end of their session, he’d carved a Mabari hound out of the block and she’d managed a fat, wobbly looking bear. He says nothing when she shows him, instead plucking it out of her hands and trading her bear for the Mabari. She decides she’ll keep it on her desk, content to let Blackwall either toss her bear to the fire for fuel or salvage an actual animal from her rough work.

She asks him for a set of knitting needles and he complies with a grunt and a pat on the shoulder. She’ll knit him a scarf – blue, if she can find the yarn. Knitting usually helps when she gets like this; she can focus on the pattern and stop fixating on everything she’s done wrong since she came to this blasted, flea-bitten country.

By the end of the week, the sting of rejection has faded to general ill humor, but Daphne finds herself unable to hide from Cullen’s gaze at the war table and it makes her skin crawl. She wishes Cassandra would allow her to hide directly behind her, but an attempt to do so would result in a demand for explanation. She wouldn’t out Cullen like that, nor open herself for such ridicule in a room full of adults.

She’d never felt like such a child.

She buries the embarrassment as Cullen speaks, listening attentively but refusing to look at him, knowing full well that he’s been watching her the past few days. If she were to make eye contact, there’s no way she could hide the embarrassed tears that spring forth every time she thinks about the kiss.

Or how warm his lips are.

Or how he smells like cedar and steel.

Or the brief flash of tenderness in his eyes before being shoved away in favor of sorrow and regret and something else she’s not mature enough to understand.

She realizes that she’s been glaring a hole into Ferelden when Leliana addresses her. Her cheeks burn.

“So sorry,” she murmurs, unclenching the fists behind her back. “Could you repeat that?” Leliana raises a brow.

“We need to know when you plan on venturing to Redcliffe to seek an audience with Grand Enchanter Fiona,” she says patiently. Daphne’s lip twitches to contain her scowl and Cullen’s glove creaks with the strain of a clenched fist upon his sword’s pommel. She suspects the source of his tension stems from elsewhere; perhaps the fact that everyone but he is on board with seeking the mage’s help, and not because everyone is suddenly turning to _him_ to end a war he’d had no part in and had no desire to involve himself with.

No. That’s _her_ problem.

“First of the week,” she says quietly, stowing her mounting frustration until she can go ‘throw stuff at things’ with Sera. The mark on her palm buzzes beneath her glove and she digs her fingernails into where she knows the slash of green lies. “It should be a short trip.”

“Who will you be taking?” Cullen asks. She shifts her gaze from Leliana to the map, answering his question but refusing to acknowledge him personally:

“Cassandra, Varric, and Vivienne. She and Fiona should know each other and she might help me gain some leverage against them. Bull can take his company and sweep through, removing any threats of bandits that might remain, and Sera can assist agents in setting up more supply lines. I believe Solas has something to investigate while we’re out there, so I should be traveling with a full party.”

“Well thought, Herald,” Josephine says, jotting something down. Daphne doesn’t bother correcting her against the honorific, feeling no fight within her. Her advisory council notices.

“Is everything alright, Trevelyan?” Cassandra asks. Her voice is measured – the only sign of concern is the barest press of her brow. Daphne gives a shrug that reassures nobody.

“I suppose,” she says dully, avoiding eye contact. She’s been unreasonably emotional since the incident in the trees and dwelling too long on her unhappiness causes a lump to form in her throat that she can’t swallow down. It’s absolutely infuriating.

“Are you quite sure?” Josephine presses, giving her a look that Daphne recognizes as sisterly concern. It reminds her of Eliza and her jaw aches with the strain of holding back a sob. “You haven’t been your usual… spirited self of late.”

Daphne blinks rapidly and presses her mouth into a thin line. She’s done so well to beat back the looming storm cloud over her head this past week, but being surrounded by three older women reminds her too much of home and she’s finding her careful mask of neutrality slipping. She misses her sisters. She misses her horses and dogs and her father. After several seconds of swallowing around the lump in her throat she says, “I suppose I’m homesick.” It’s not a complete lie and so she continues, “the sooner we close this breach, the sooner I can go back to terrorizing my horses. Now, if we’re quite done here?” Her voice betrays her and cracks on the final upswing of her sentence so she turns on her heel and marches out of the room, but not before sliding her eyes across to Cullen for a single glimpse of a mouth pressed into a frown and guilt practically bleeding from his eyes.

A sob tumbles from her mouth as she exits the Chantry proper and thankfully, nobody has the poor judgment to seek her out when she retires to her cabin to cry out her stress and frustration.

She knows it’s not only about Cullen, though her wounded pride outweighs the stress of the situation she’s found herself in. She should have expected his rejection. She shouldn’t have kissed him in the first place, but it’s too late to dwell on the past. 

She flops onto the bed and stares at the wooden ceiling, willing real tears to burst forth in a cathartic flood. Her chest is heavy and her throat is tight, but her eyes remain dry. _Not thirty seconds ago, you wanted to cry right in front of everyone, and now that you’re alone you won’t let loose?_

Typical.

She sighs and lifts her head to let it fall pathetically onto her pillow.

How much longer is she going to have to deal with this place? The snow is taunting her, she’s nearly constantly sore, and now that she’s embarrassed herself in front of the Commander of the Inquisition, she very much would like to run off to Jader and find the first boat headed to Ostwi—

“Hey Bambi, you up for some Diamondback?”

_I thought I locked that door._

Evidently, she hasn’t, as Varric Tethras is now leaning against the wall of her cabin, arms crossed over his chest and one foot draped over the other. She rolls to her side and pushes herself up, wondering if she’d rather continue wallowing or let Varric drag her into the tavern to socialize. He doesn’t leave her much room to debate, instead regarding her with a face screwed into an expression of concern.

“What’s wrong with you?”

 _Tactfully put, Varric._ She shrugs. “I don’t know.” _Liar._ “Homesick.”

“Liar.” Fuck Varric.

She rolls her eyes and falls back on the bed, curling her knees into her chest as Varric approaches so he can sit with her.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“This have anything to do with the extra-tight wad Curly’s got his smalls in?” Daphne snorts, but otherwise stays quiet. The sudden flame in her cheeks gives her away, though. “Oh, so it does. What’d you do to him?”

Daphne chews her lower lip and considers her options. She could insist that she hasn’t done anything to him, something Varric would immediately see through, or she could tell him the truth, which is something he’d immediately tell everyone. He seems to have a modicum of tact though, and he’s on thin ice with Cassandra and doesn’t seem on friendly terms with many other people. Sera, maybe. She gives up and mumbles into her pillow, “I kissed him.”

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you, because it _sounds_ like you just said you kissed him.”

Daphne sighs in response.

“Oh, Bambi.” She doesn’t hear much judgment in his voice. Maybe some disappointment and a little bit of exasperation, but he’s not judging her.

“I misread the situation. I thought he’d been flirting with me—he’d been messing with my hair—”

“With your hair?”

“Admiring it, I thought. He’d had it wrapped around his thumb.” She wraps a lock of hair around her thumb and holds her hand out to Varric, who studies it like he wishes he had something to take notes with.

“He’s a hair guy. Doesn’t surprise me.”

“He’s a _nothing_ guy. He didn’t kiss me back.”

Varric laughs. “That also doesn’t surprise me.” Daphne gives him a look and he chuckles again, softer. “Listen, Bambi. Curly has a stick so far up his ass it’s giving him a sore throat. You probably surprised the shit out of him and he had thirty different timelines and scenarios running through his head of _how is this going to go?_ Before you even pulled away.”

“I shouldn’t have kissed him.”

“Probably not,” Varric agrees, earning him a kick in the thigh. “He watches you like a rancher watches a spooked horse. If he wanted nothing to do with you, he’d probably ignore you.”

“Thanks for calling me a horse, Varric.”

“It’s called a metaphor.”

“Actually, that was an analogy. And you’re supposed to be the writer.”

“Pedant.”

Daphne grins and sits up again, crossing her legs and staring at her ankles. “What do I do?”

“Let him take the stick out of his own ass. It’ll take some time, so just keep doing your job. Train, do what the war council asks, kiss some ass, and he’ll come around.” He pauses, stands from the bed and makes his way to the door. “Diamondback?”

“Maybe later.”

He nods. “Don’t hide out in here forever. If you’d rather be sequestered, we could always give you to the Chantry.”

Daphne makes a face at him and falls back against her pillow as he slips through the door into the village.

* * *

Cullen isn’t two bites into his evening meal when the chair across from him scrapes back and Varric falls heavily onto the table.

“By all means, please join me,” Cullen mumbles around a mouthful of stew, glaring over his spoon. Varric eyes him with his usual level of scrutiny before leaning over the table.

“Have you seen Bambi? She’s been real antisocial of late and people are noticing. She missed an alchemy lesson with Adan.”

“She’s been taking alchemy lessons?”

“Paying him, too. Her insistence. Anyway. You see her?”

Cullen frowns, setting his spoon down. “Not since the war council meeting yesterday.”

Varric regards him with a level of suspicion that immediately tips Cullen off. _He knows. She told him._

He shouldn’t be angry. Of course she’d eventually seek confidence in someone, and he should be grateful she chose the dwarf over the loudmouthed city elf she often trains with. The question here is whether he admits to it, or plays ignorant.

“She admitted at the war council meeting that she’s been homesick. Perhaps that’s why she’s been withdrawn,” Cullen supplies, but Varric shakes his head.

“Nah, people like Bambi surround themselves with other people when they’re homesick. Something…” he levels him with a narrowed-eyed, ‘I know what happened so you might as well confess’ look, “happened.”

Cullen pinches the bridge of his nose before reaching for his drink. “How much did she tell you?”

“Enough to figure that she thinks you hate her and is avoiding you like the plague.”

Cullen sighs exasperatedly. “Maker, I don’t hate her!” Quite the opposite, if he’s to be completely honest with himself.

Of course, he’s not going to be honest with himself.

“Maybe try telling her that?”

“I’ve been trying to get her to talk to me,” he says, taking a long pull of ale. He’s far too sober for this conversation and the direction it’s taking. “What did she _say?_ ”

Varric pauses, either to recall her words or fabricate a substitute. “That she misread the situation because she thought you were _flirting_ with her, and then admitted she shouldn’t have done it.”

“She shouldn’t have,” Cullen muses distractedly, recalling the conversation they’d had before she kissed him. He complimented her, didn’t he? And he was playing with her hair, like a teenager.

“So, you don’t like her.”

“It has nothing to do with whether I _like_ her,” Cullen spits, running a hand through his hair in agitation. “She’s the Herald. I’m the Commander. We have _duties_ here we cannot ignore.” Nor can he ignore the gleam in her eyes when she knows she’s about to say something clever, or the set in her jaw when she’s determined to get something done.

“So you _do_ like her.”

“Tethras, you have two seconds to leave this table before you find yourself under it.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, Curly,” he says with a wink, but scooting back and standing from the table nonetheless. He looks around the crowded tavern and leans forward. “I was lying, by the way. I know exactly where she is.”

Cullen narrows his eyes at the dwarf. “Where?”

“In your camp… beating the shit out of your soldiers.” Cullen rises from his chair so fast that he nearly knocks his chair over and strides out of the tavern without a word, leaving a cackling Varric to follow in his wake.

Villagers and Inquisition personnel alike leave Cullen and Varric a wide berth as he winds his way to the village gates, bearing right towards the soldier camp. The space his men occupy while running drills is empty and he follows the line of tents to where the sparring ring had been recently erected, around which a sizeable crowd of soldiers and civilians had amassed. He marches into the throng of people, who easily part with weak protests dying on their lips, until Cullen stands on the other side of the wooden fence, next to his second in command.

“She’s a bloody hurricane,” Rylen says, and Cullen scowls to hear the dreamy sigh present in his voice. He looks around – one soldier is using his shirt as a sling, and another has a handful of snow held to her bloody nose. He finally turns his attention to the inside of the ring, his mouth immediately going dry.

Daphne Trevelyan: topless save for a thick black breastband, poured into the tightest black leather breeches he’d ever seen, boots and socks discarded in a pile with the rest of her clothes, and hands wrapped in strips of linen.

Boxing with one of his archers.

The ringing in his ears subsides and he hears the conversations behind him.

“Ten to one against Lavellan.”

“I’ll see that bet.”

“Is it a sin to watch this?”

Cullen clenches his jaw and studiously ignores the flare of Daphne’s hips in those pants, choosing instead to size up her opponent. Eirlan Lavellan had come to the Inquisition as Daphne had, a delegate in the Conclave, but had miraculously been hunting in the mountains the day the breach exploded. Instead of remaining in the hills, he had picked up his bow and joined the fight against the demons pouring from the sky. Once the breach had stabilized, he approached Cullen with an offer of service. Since then, he’d proven himself as a talented archer with a friendly disposition and a will to prove himself.

Up until this point, Cullen had been rather fond of him. He’s shirtless as well, long bronze hair tied back and body steaming in the mountain air. He grins at Daphne as they circle each other. Their bodies are mirrors of each other, fists held loosely to their chests and crouched on the balls of their feet, until Daphne feints to the left and Lavellan falls for it, swinging at air as she rolls around him and connects a punch to his kidneys.

Cullen winces – he’d taught her that, and he knows how much that hurts. She smirks as Lavellan wheezes and rubs the sting out of his back with tight eyes as his fellow soldiers cheer him on. Daphne, for her part, has not come out of her previous matches unscathed; there’s a scratch on her collar bone and a bruise on her ribcage, but it seems that Cullen’s men have been too afraid to go for her face.

The scout with the bloody snow held to her face is an indicator that Daphne holds no such reservations.

“They’re going until someone’s pinned,” an unamused voice says to his left. Cullen tears his eyes from the scrapping duo as Cassandra joins him, arms crossed and lips pursed. “Nobody’s been able to pin her yet. Someone came close, but she slipped away.”

“You haven’t thought to stop this?” Cullen asks her. She shrugs.

“She insisted. What was it she said, Rylen?”

On his right, Rylen laughs. “Bonding.”

“Bonding,” Cullen echoes, as Daphne skirts close enough by them that he could reach out and brush her steaming skin, can smell the sweat on her and count the few freckles on her back. She and Lavellan seem to be a match in strategy, still getting a feel for each other with tentative jabs and hesitant footwork. He traces the column of her spine with his eyes, mesmerized by her muscles rolling under impossibly soft-looking skin, and she takes a step forward, left fist glowing and held close to her chin, as Lavellan blocks a right hook and jabs left to her shoulder, sending the left side of her body snapping back. They make eye contact and he swears he sees her eyes darken, jaw clench.

Lavellan moves forward to tackle her in her moment of distraction, but she shifts her balance and wheels her leg around to kick him straight in the sternum. A chorus of groans fills the air around him as Lavellan topples over with a grunt, but he rolls onto his side and stands easily, a small footprint comically bright over his chest.

“That was dirty, Trevelyan,” he mutters, grinning. She shrugs.

“So’s trying to throw your opponent when they have their back turned,” she counters.

“Maybe don’t turn your back?”

“Maybe you’re not good enough to face me head on!” Her voice is pitched to carry, and it does its job of sending laughter scattering through the crowd. Lavellan’s cheeks burn but he swipes a hand in front of him, as if dismissing the thought.

“Call me an opportunist.”

“I think I’ll call you a loser.” Cullen snorts and Rylen barks a laugh.

“Just kiss already!” someone on the edge of the ring calls out, and both heads snap to the source: Sera, perched on the fence, kicking her legs back and forth with a smirk. Lavellan blushes and bores his eyes into the hard-packed earth, but Daphne rolls her shoulders and drops into a crouch. The jeer is all she needs to sweep Lavellan’s legs out from underneath him and pounce, straddling his stomach and pinning his shoulders with her forearm, knees pinning his wrists, but before the crowd can count to five, Lavellan headbutts her face with enough force to snap her head back and break her nose. Cullen can see pained tears spring in her eyes as she blinks them away fiercely and the crowd is silent as blood instantly starts streaming down her face.

“Creators, Daph, I’m so sorry—”

Cullen unthinkingly vaults the fence and barks an order for the crowd to disperse, and they hurry to do so as he pulls Daphne off Lavellan, who follows and hovers nervously at his elbow.

“Go get Enchanter Ellendra,” he orders the elf, who snaps to attention and manages to tear his gaze away from the irate Herald of Andraste, held in place by Cullen’s iron grip on her upper arms. He releases a hand to grasp her chin, turning her face up at the sky to inspect the damage. Her lower lip is bleeding too, contributing to the steady stream running down her chin and into her cleavage. He ignores this as best as he can. “You bit your lip.”

“You ruined his moment,” she snarls as best as she can with a congested nose and a swollen lip.

“I ruined his moment?”

“I wasn’t expecting him to headbutt me, but he could have won.”

“You wanted to lose?”

“I was tired of them letting me win. I know they’re better than me.” Cullen releases her and stares, and she looks down and coughs up some of the blood that unfortunately dripped into her throat. “I’m so _tired_ of everyone treating me like I’m some living artifact. I just wanted them to see that I could bleed like them, that I could lose like them—”

“And I ruined it.”

She finally meets his eyes, her own swimming with frustrated and pained tears.

“Daphn—”

“Don’t,” she mutters, turning away from him to gather her clothes from their pile on the ground. He pinches the bridge of his nose with the hand not covered in her blood and watches her try to wash the blood off her chest in the snow before pulling her tunic back over her head and tying it up.

They need to talk about this.

Before he can approach again and try to get her to talk, Lavellan returns with Ellendra in tow, muttering under her breath and gesturing Daphne over. She places a hand on Daphne’s bloody nose without a word and within seconds of wreathing her hands in blue healing magic, Daphne’s nose sets with a pop.

“Fucking _ow,_ ” she hisses before hastily apologizing and thanking Ellendra.

“I’m not dealing with your lip. That needs to heal on its own and I’m not good with cuts.”

“Just bones?” Ellendra rolls her eyes.

“And lightning.”

“An interesting skillset,” Daphne says with a wincing smile as the enchanter leaves. She continues dressing as Lavellan apologizes again. “Really, Eirlan. I’m fine.”

“Commander’s going to kill me,” he says, glancing nervously in Cullen’s direction. Daphne spares him a glance, wordlessly asks _what are you still doing here_ , before smiling at Lavellan again.

“I’ve made sure he won’t.”

He exhales shakily. “I suppose you want to postpone your fletching lesson?” he asks, rubbing his neck and looking in Cullen’s direction again. She sighs and perches herself on the fence to put her socks on.

“Tomorrow.”

He nods and pushes off the fence, salutes to Cullen, and shuffles toward town. Cullen doesn’t need to ask to know that Lavellan is half in love with Daphne already.

She doesn’t look up as he approaches, instead focused on rolling her socks over her breeches. “What.”

“We need to talk.”

“I really think we don’t,” she says flippantly. “Hand me a boot, please.” He complies and watches as she shifts her balance on the narrow beam to shove her foot into her shoe. She leaves it unlaced and gestures for the other one.

“We do,” he insists, leaning against the sparring fence and casting a look around them. His soldiers have returned to their evening duties, switching patrol shifts and taking meals or sparring in the training grounds. Nobody will hear the awkward conversation he’s about to force them through.

“Why, so you can remind me of what an idiot I am?” she turns so she’s straddling the beam, one leg hooked around a lower rail while the other is stretched in front of her so she can lace her boots. Conveniently, this prevents her from making eye contact with Cullen. He sighs.

“You’re not an idiot,” he says patiently, removing the glove covered in her blood so he has something to do. He examines a scar on his knuckle. “You just… I—” he sighs and twists the glove.

“I’m a child with a crush who did something she shouldn’t have, because _clearly_ it has gotten in the way of our ability to behave like professional adults, so it’d really benefit the both of us to continue pretending this didn’t happen until the breach closes and I can go home.”

“Pretending it didn’t happen isn’t going to change the fact that it _did._ ”

“I’m very good at pretending.” She switches feet and works on the other boot.

“I need to at least tell you that it wasn’t entirely unwelcome,” he says in a rush, and Daphne nearly falls off the fence, eyes wide and cheeks burning.

“What?”

It’s Cullen’s turn to blush. “You surprised me.”

She swings her leg over the fence and turns to face him, looking down with narrowed eyes. “You like me too?” and he nearly laughs in her face, because it’s such a childish way to say it, to shoehorn every confusing and infuriating feeling he has for her into ‘you like me.’ He doesn’t _like_ her. He didn’t _like_ watching her almost win a fight against one of his best-trained soldiers. He doesn’t _like_ the way her brows knit when she thinks through a problem at the war table, or her laugh at one of Varric’s jokes. His feelings, unfortunately, run far deeper than mere _like_ , and it’s something that he needs to address one way or another before they get him in trouble.

“It’s…”

“Complicated?”

He sighs. “You’re the Herald and I’m the commander—”

“I’m a fucking artifact and—”

“We have _duties_ that must be seen to,” he says, his voice rising over hers and finally silencing her with a snap of closing teeth, “and there is a line I cannot cross.” She blinks.

“Duties,” she says, lifting her left hand to stare at the mark through her bindings. He sighs and takes her hand before he can stop himself, unwinds the bloody linen from her knuckles and frees the mark to glow between them. Her breath catches as he runs a thumb across the green slash in her palm, his bones buzzing with the strange magic.

“Does it hurt?” he asks softly, not taking his eyes off her hand. To anyone else, he’s simply the commander looking over a soldier for injuries.

“Only around rifts,” she says, “or…”

“the breach.” She nods, but he doesn’t see it, choosing instead to take her other hand and unravel her bound fingers.

“When this is over…” she murmurs, touching his plated shoulder, “I mean when the breach is sealed. Could we…? I mean.”

He looks up from her hand dwarfed in his and smiles slightly. “When the breach is sealed and you happen to kiss me again, I _will_ kiss you back.”

She purses her lips to keep from smiling too widely and the effect is charming, even with her chin and neck still covered in dried blood. “I suppose I should close that breach.”

“I suppose you should.”


	8. Lesson Five: Do Not Engage the Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevelyan decides to fight a dragon. It does not go well for her.

A Report, from the bedroll of one Daphne Trevelyan, Herald of Andraste:

_Contacted the Magi. Grand Enchanter Fiona claims to have no idea why I’m here and has no memory of approaching me in Val Royeaux. It turns out that a Tevinter Magister by the name of Gereon Alexius has conscripted them into serving him and his cult of fanatics known as the Venatori. He pledges himself to someone known as the “Elder One.”  At present, there’s nothing we can do to help them, or they us._

_Also met his son, Felix, and former mentee, an Altus named Dorian Pavus. They claim to be unaware of Alexius’ full plan but seem willing to help us thwart it. Pavus told us that Alexius has pioneered some form of magic that bends the rules of time and space – in fact, the rifts we encountered in and near Redcliffe seemed to warp time itself. I trust that he knows a great deal about the subject, as he’s admitted that he and Alexius worked on it together for a time._

_Whatever his plan, I believe this to be a far greater threat than defecting Templars._

_I will refrain from making a decision until we return to Haven._

_Faithfully,  
DT_

Daphne reads over her report once more, folds it into thirds, and hands it off to a scout to be sealed and sent off. She rubs at a temple as she looks around the camp. They’d just cleared the east road of bandits and set up among towering basalt columns, yet to travel onward towards some valley from which they’ve heard a distant rumbling. Not a good sign.

She takes it upon herself to walk the area, away from Sera and Iron Bull’s cackling. The path past camp leads down a hill through a wide, low tunnel, lined with stalks of elfroot. In the corner of her eye, Daphne spots a peculiar stalk growing taller than the others with ends tipped in purple. _Royal elfroot_. She squeals and darts forward, unreasonably excited, but willing to take pleasure in a small victory today. She plucks the leaves from the stalk, taking a longer tendril of vine-covered leaves and weaving it into her crown braid. She decides she feels like a forest princess and continues down the path, spying two more stalks to harvest, before the low rumble of a dragon freezes her in place.

Scrambling, Daphne crouches behind the bush she’d been approaching and peers around. A massive, horned high dragon rests, surrounded by her spawn, digging her claws into the earth. A giddy half-shriek half-laugh bursts from her mouth and she clamps her hand over her mouth, lest the dragon hear her from this far away. They _do_ have good hearing, don’t they?

Daphne decides it’s in her best interest not to charge a dragon on her own, so she stuffs more royal elfroot into her satchel and bolts back the way she came, sprinting all the way into camp. She skids to a halt at the campfire, where everyone nearby stares at her with varying degrees of concern and surprise on their faces.

“Is everything alright?” Cassandra asks, rising to rest a hand on her back. “I had no idea you were even gone.”

“Dra… Dragon,” Daphne rasps between breaths, her heart hammering in her chest and lungs protesting loudly.

“ _What?”_ Sera shouts, throwing an arrow she’d been fletching into the earth. A slow smile creeps over Bull’s face.

Daphne braces her hands on her knees, trying to gain her breath. “Dragon. In the… in the valley. Didn’t see me.”

“It’s probably best we remain unseen,” Cassandra warns, but Sera and Iron Bull’s burning glee feeds Daphne’s desire to fight it.

“It doesn’t look as big as the one on the coast,” Daphne protests, her breath finally regained, hands on her hips. The pair looks very much like a stern mother and a child begging for sweets before dinner. “We’ve barely fought anything this entire trip. Imagine the looks on their faces when we ride into Haven with a dragon head!” Behind her, Sera cackles and Iron Bull grunts appreciatively.

“ _Absolutely not,”_ Cassandra insists and marches toward her tent. Daphne, Iron Bull, and Sera exchange looks, and Sera casually stoops to collect her finished arrows into a quiver. Daphne silently meets Solas’ gaze and beckons him over. He complies, his head cocked in the wary tilt he adopts whenever he watches humans do strange human things.

“It looks like it breathes fire. Do you still have that frost staff equipped?”

“You assume I’m going to fight this thing with you,” Solas says flatly, lifting an auburn brow. Sera rolls her eyes behind him, making rude gestures at his back. Daphne bites her cheek to keep from laughing and very seriously nods her head.

“Solas, would you be so kind as to help us fight this dragon?”

“You think this will bring security to the people of Redcliffe and benefit the Inquisition?” he asks. Daphne snorts and she swears she hears an undertone of a Fereldan accent, wondering if Solas is making fun of Cullen.

“I absolutely do,” she says solemnly, her face blank.

“Then lead the way,” he answers, strapping his staff to his back with a smirk.

* * *

_Cullen:_

_Our return to Haven will be delayed as the Herald has taken it upon herself to slay a Fereldan Frostback in the valley southeast of Redcliffe._

_The only casualties were one of Trevelyan’s daggers, roughly a dozen dragonlings, and a very large dragon._

_In the throes of her victory, she neglected to inform anyone (or perhaps she had no idea) that she’d received a large gash on the back of her head – the entire “hunting party” was so soaked in blood, that nobody knew whose it was or from where it came. The Herald immediately fainted upon returning to camp. We transported her to the Crossroads to a healer, who has determined that it was merely a concussion combined with moderate blood loss and fatigue. A poultice of elfroot and crystal grace to the more serious wounds and plenty of rest has her back on her feet and recounting her story with gusto. If Ferelden wasn’t convinced she’s Maker-sent before, they certainly believe in her now._

_We will arrive back to Haven within a day. I hope you know where we can stow a dragon skull._

_Yours in Service,  
Cassandra Pentaghast_

Cullen suppresses a long-suffering sigh and throws the correspondence onto the war table, where Leliana picks it up and reads over it.

“Hmm,” she intones mildly and passes it to Josephine.

Her reaction is much more appropriate: “A _dragon?”_ she gasps, nearly dropping her ledger board. She starts pacing and muttering in rapid Antivan. Cullen worries the bridge of his nose with gritted teeth, mentally preparing the lecture he has in store for Daphne when she returns, concussion and all. He wonders if that’s going to come before or after the lecture about turning her back on the Templars.

“Was she thinking at all?” he hisses, and Leliana sighs.

“Come off it,” she dismisses. “She’s alive. Everyone but the dragon seems no worse for wear.”

“She could have _died,”_ Cullen says desperately, throwing his head back. A migraine is building behind his temples.

“Did she?”

Cullen growls low in his throat, still infuriated that Daphne would so selfishly – that she had the nerve to – without so much as a _plan_ – he can’t articulate his anger and the fragments of incoherent fury thundering in his head make the veins behind his eyes pulse with renewed vigor. Leliana’s nonchalance is not helping. He glances over to where Josephine stands, still muttering under her breath and scribbling rapidly on a piece of paper.

Determining that there’s no real work at the war table to be done without the Herald present, Cullen excuses himself to further refine the words he’s saving for Daphne’s return.

_Maker preserve me, the girl is trying to kill me._

* * *

 

Daphne’s coterie of companions and soldiers arrives in Haven at twilight a day after Cassandra’s letter, with Daphne herself barely able to stay upright in her saddle. She’d been slammed into the ground by a well-placed tail whip in her dragon battle, but after colliding with hard-packed earth, the back of her head made the acquaintance of an angry dragonling. It had swiped at her just as she’d landed on her left wrist, clawing at whatever it could reach. She received three long gashes, the longest being from the top of her left ear to the base of her neck on the right side and requiring a fair amount of stitches that threaten to split if she so much as hears a loud noise, much less turn her head. She’s been knocking back healing potions so often that the smell alone makes her gag, and her constant movement keeps the wound from getting any time to truly heal.

The resulting concussion from her fall hasn’t been kind to her either and has yet to dissipate. Cassandra, mercifully holding back the barrage of “I told you so’s” on the tip of her tongue, has been keeping a close eye on her and preventing her from falling asleep for more than three hours at a time.

This has led to a very dizzy, very tired, and incredibly cranky Herald, who by some miracle has yet to fall off of her horse. When she approaches the stable, Dennet has to bodily dismount her and lean her against a post to regain her composure. Spending several hours on a moving animal and transitioning to solid ground has the world spinning around her as she struggles to maintain her equilibrium, tears springing to her eyes and bile roiling in her stomach. _Please don’t vomit,_ she begs herself. _It’s horrible for morale._

When the ground and sky seem to have righted themselves, Daphne takes a shuddering breath and steps forward hesitantly, praying to the Maker that she doesn’t have to be carried to her cabin. Faith, however, is not on her side, as that single step sends a wave of pain and nausea careening over her body. Against her will, she doubles over, still leaning against the wooden post Dennet had deposited her on, and vomits violently into the snow.

Her stitches rip and the pain nearly blinds her, a low groan slipping between her lips. Tears are falling openly down her face and she swipes at them viciously with the back of her hand. In the distance through unfocused eyes, she sees Cassandra and Cullen coming towards her, haste in their steps, and she curses. She curses the concussion, she curses the warm flow of blood seeping down her neck and into her hair and tunic, and she curses the decision to fight a fucking dragon in the first place. Dizziness takes over and her hand clamps on the wooden post in a white-knuckled grip.

“You can do it yourself,” she mutters under her breath, ignoring the pair of tall, blurry, human-shaped figures approaching her. She pushes off her anchor and begins skirting the edge of the gate, her head down and her chin tucked. The smell of her own blood is making her dizzy again and she wobbles. A low curse from her left snaps her head up and she sees Cullen and Cassandra all but running towards her. She gives up the fight and lets Cassandra rush forward to wrap a supportive arm around her.

“Herald, you should have told me you were getting worse,” she admonishes. Cullen runs his eyes over her with a hard expression on his face, as if checking to make sure she still had both arms and legs.

“I didn’t think I was worse until I dismounted,” Daphne admits, letting her tears fall unchecked. She sounds and feels very much like an ill child, and wants nothing more than to curl into her father’s lap and have a story read to her. “I got sick.”

“We saw,” Cassandra says, a thread of sympathy in her tone.

“Cassandra?”

“Yes, Lady Herald?”

“I don’t think…” she trails off, her eyes glassy, the color drained out of her face, gaze trying and failing to focus on Cullen’s impossibly bright golden eyes, “I don’t think I can walk anymore.”

“Maker,” Cullen curses under his breath, throwing himself forward as Daphne stumbles out of Cassandra’s grasp. He lifts her effortlessly into his arms, the metallic scent of blood slamming into him. “She’s bleeding again,” he announces, settling her across his chest.

“Her stitches must have ripped,” Cassandra offers, and Daphne mumbles incoherently into Cullen’s shoulder.

“What was that?” he asks, the hard edge in his voice wavering.

“I’m bleeding on you,” Daphne repeats quietly, a tearful quiver in her voice. Cullen’s stomach lurches as he carries her into the gate.

“I’ve been bled on by plenty of people,” he assures her. “Should we take her to the Chantry?”

“No, she needs privacy,”

“I need my bed,” Daphne insists. Cassandra maneuvers around the pair to open Daphne’s door and begins lighting candles. Cullen deposits Daphne carefully on the bed, trying to keep her sitting up.

“Can you sit?” he asks gently, kneeling in front of her and rubbing circles in her knees. She tries to focus on his hands and nods meekly. “I’m going to get Adan. Cassandra is going to help you out of your armor.” Cullen gives her knee a gentle squeeze and leans forward like he wants to brush a kiss across her temple, but hesitates and stands. Daphne watches with bleary eyes as he nods to Cassandra and rushes out of her cabin, letting the door click shut behind him.

Cassandra approaches and sits beside her, unraveling the scarf from her midsection and carefully slipping her leather jacket off her shoulders. Daphne complies when she’s asked to lift her arms, wincing and holding back vomit with the movement, so Cassandra can lift the thin chainmail off of her.

“We’ll have to take your tunic off,” Cassandra warns, and Daphne sighs but begins unlacing the front of the grey tunic with shaking hands. When Cassandra offers to help, Daphne holds up a hand.

“Please. Let me at least do this.” Cassandra seems to understand and turns instead to fill a basin with cool water and drops several cloths within. Daphne manages to shimmy out of her tunic and is left wearing a modest black brassiere that binds her breasts tight and is snug to her rib cage, her breeches, and boots. Her neck is starting to cramp and the blood on her neck and back is starting to dry and itch, but she’s so exhausted that she can barely focus on staying upright.

“Cassandra,” she murmurs into the room, and Cassandra moves to kneel before her. “I’m sorry for making us fight that dragon.” Cassandra chuckles and drops her head.

“May I be honest with you?”

“Always.”

“Before I pledged myself to the Seeker Order, I used to want to be a dragon hunter,” Cassandra says, and Daphne smiles weakly.

“Mission accomplished then,” she says, her resounding laugh cut off by Cullen marching in with a bundle of supplies and a sour look on his face. He’s joined in short order by Sera and Adan, the former resisting Cullen’s attempts at being shooed away.

“You think you’re gonna sew her up then?” the elf demands, scowling. “Because Grenade Man sure as hell isn’t!”

Adan grumbles something along the lines of “I’m just here to mix the poultice,” and sets supplies on the desk.

“Sera, I’m trained in emergency field medicine, if all you’re going to do is–”

“Oh look, Commander Cully is useful for once!” she barks, and Cassandra hushes them both before they can start shouting over each other.

“Sera, please go into the Chantry and get more bandages from Mother Giselle. Commander, if you would kindly help me getting the Herald situated… and _both_ of you stop fighting,” she commands, cowing them both. Sera slinks out, throwing a rude gesture over her shoulder. Cullen removes his gloves and seats himself behind Daphne, carefully pushing her hair over one shoulder.

“It’s hard to see through your hair,” he comments, gently shifting through thick waves to find the origin of the laceration. Daphne winces and hisses through her teeth. His hands still and she grits her teeth and sets her shoulders, determined to show as little weakness as possible.

“Are you going to lecture me about running off to chase dragons?” she asks. Cullen sighs.

“I was, but I think you’ve learned your lesson.” He wrings out a rag and begins wiping blood off her scalp. “Unless you’d like to hear what I have prepared?”

“I’ll pass,” she mumbles, biting her lip when he grazes the cut. “How bad is it?”

“It doesn’t look infected. Probably the elfroot you’re so fond of. The area is bruised as well. I need to get the torn stitches out and redo it.”

“I had no idea you were secretly a surgeon,” Daphne teases as best she can, and Cullen scoffs.

“Hardly. Templars are trained in every aspect of combat, from magical defense, to melee, and even emergency medical treatment. You never know what you might face.” He parts her hair to see the gash clearly and begins plucking out torn thread. “I’m warning you now, it’ll be a patch job. This scar won’t be pretty.”

“I have a lot of hair. It’ll be fine.” He hums in agreement and the room lapses into silence, Adan having completed the poultices and wordlessly returned to his regular duties. Cassandra slips out to debrief Leliana and Josephine, and the two are suddenly left alone. Daphne fights the urge to fall asleep, lulled by the warmth of Cullen’s hands and his gentle shifting through her hair. Every time she closes her eyes and almost sinks backward into his warmth, pain lances through her neck and keeps her awake.

“It was a big dragon,” she murmurs into the room, breaking the silence.

“I believe you.” He’s out of her hair and is carefully cleaning out the section of the gash slashing across her neck.

“Will I have a nice scar?” Daphne asks, earning a short laugh from Cullen.

“Indeed you will,” he assures her. He lobs a soiled rag onto the ground and reaches around her to grab a fresh one. She smells like blood, sweat, and dust.

“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” she admits, her voice catching again. Cullen sighs and his hands still for a moment. “I just… I don’t know. I’ve been able to get so much done the last few times in the field, and this time felt like a complete waste.”

“You cleared the east road of bandits,” Cullen reminds her drily.

“We always fight bandits.”

“You felt it was a waste so you decided to fight a dragon?”

Daphne is slapped with the poor logic of her argument and snorts. “Yes.”

“You could have died, Daphne.” She’d expected a comment similar to this, but she didn’t expect the soft and fearful tone of his voice. The weight of her name alone stirs a longing in her belly. He’s abandoned the wound, now wiping off blood and dirt from the column of her spine. She knows that could be taken care of with a bath, but a perverse part of her is going to pretend that he’s doing it to have an excuse to keep touching her. His touch is gentle, a prayer on her skin that keeps her from slipping into unconsciousness. She focuses on the warmth of his hands.

“But I didn’t,” Daphne points out, and Cullen heaves another long-suffering sigh. She suppresses a laugh. “Have I given you another headache?”

* * *

“At this point, I probably have an ulcer.” He traps a lock of hair that’s fallen from her shoulder and admires the glint of copper in the light, coiling the length around his index finger. Daphne hums and her head falls back a fraction of an inch before she winces. Cullen leans forward unconsciously, wanting nothing more than to take her into his arms and bury his nose in her hair, but instead he drops the lock of hair wound round his finger and leans forward to drop the rag and pick up a surgical needle, a set of shears, and thread.

Cullen swears he hears Daphne release a shaky sigh and her shoulders sag slightly and he’s taken back to that moment in the trees. His stomach clenches and a spike of desire jolts through him, accompanied by the shame of wishing to take advantage of her weakened state, despite how soft her skin looks in the flickering light or how inviting the curve of her bare waist may be. He allows himself the luxury of brushing the back of his hand along her upper arm.

“I need to pour water into it,” he says gently, running his thumb along the cord of tendon on the side of her neck. She draws a breath and nods shakily, shifting to position her head over the basin on the floor. Cullen scoops water into a cup and drains it over the gash, flushing out blood and dirt and bits of thread. She hisses and then bites her lip, tears spilling over the corners of her eyes, and Cullen resists the urge to pull her into his lap and hold her until her pain subsides. Instead, he grabs another clean rag and presses it to the wound. Daphne sits up and breathes through the stinging pain, eyes clenched shut and lips pressed into a firm line. Cullen’s free hand slides over her thigh and rubs circles into her leather breeches. Her eyes flicker open – bright green and glossy in the light – and they spend several heartbeats staring at each other in silence.

Sera interrupts the moment by loudly reentering the room, her arms full of bandages and a bottle of alcohol. The weight that had cocooned them falls away and Cullen groans softly enough so only Daphne hears him. His hands fall away from her thigh.

“All done then?” Sera asks with eyes narrow and full of questions.

“Done cleaning,” Daphne volunteers, and Sera rolls her eyes and throws herself onto the foot of her bed. “You’re welcome to stay if you’d like. You know how I handled the last time I got stitches.”

Sera snickers. “You take claws to the neck better than you do a bitty needle!” She passes over the bottle of alcohol and Cullen reads the label over Daphne’s shoulder as he threads the needle: whiskey. “Drink up then Trev. Don’t want you howlin’ like last time.”

Daphne takes a deep sigh and lifts the bottle to her lips, swallowing two long pulls better than many of Cullen’s troops. He’s silently impressed.

Sera swipes the bottle and takes a shallow sip before passing it along to Daphne. She takes one more, gags slightly, and turns halfway to offer the bottle to Cullen. He has half a mind to take a sip but holds up the needle with a cocked brow.

“You think I should imbibe before sewing you back together?”

“Might help with the shaking,” Daphne says, curious eyes darting down to his slightly trembling hands. He curses the near-constant migraine brought on by his lyrium withdrawal and snatches the bottle for a quick swig. She’s right – the thick amber liquid warms his fingers almost instantly and chases off the edge of craving. He sets the bottle out of reach and bids Daphne to turn around and look ahead. He adjusts so he’s sitting on his right foot to give him a better angle, his left thigh resting along the edge of the bed, warm and sure against Daphne’s hip.

“Get on with it,” she mumbles, her fingers locking together. Cullen inhales shortly and thrusts the needle through her skin, pausing at her muffled groan. _This is going to be a long night._

He gets through three stitches before Daphne lets out a half-sob and her left hand flies to his thigh, still resting on her hip. He jumps slightly and pauses again.

“Do you need a break?”

“No. Please, I’m so tired. It just hurts.”

“Keep squeezing if it helps,” he offers, and she half-nods before remembering that he’s in the process of sewing her neck back together. Her fingers flare out against his breeches and when he begins the next stitch, her nails curl into muscle.

“Alright.” The warmth of her hand on his leg is a welcome weight and he concentrates on putting the Herald back together. The time passes by with relative ease, considering the situation. Halfway through, she asks for another sip of whiskey. Sera has fallen asleep in a feline curl at the foot of her bed.

"What are you going to do about the mages?" he asks, rinsing the needle and stretching his hands out.

She shrugs a shoulder as best as she can and Cullen can practically feel her eyes roll. "He wants me to meet him in Castle Redcliffe to negotiate."

Cullen frowns, needle poised at her skin. "That's an obvious trap."

"I know," she concedes, "but I'm concerned about any kind of foreign presence in power here. They've indentured the rebel mages and we need to stop it."

 _Or we get the Templars first and drive the Tevinter out by force._ He holds his tongue and focuses on tying off another stitch. "It was strange," she says again, shaking her head minutely. "The time magic. One minute you're charging along and the next you run straight into a wall, unable to control your speed. Or time itself slows as if you're trapped in tar."

"That sounds discomfiting," he murmurs, sifting through hair once more. "You need to hold still."

"Sorry." A beat of silence, and then, "we can discuss it in the morning."

"You're not going anywhere until this closes."

The skin under his hands heats. "Yes, sir."

It’s several hours past nightfall and Daphne’s eyelids are drooping when Cullen announces that he’s done. He’s reluctant to bandage her neck, afraid that she’ll find a way to tighten the bandage and choke herself in her sleep, and she expresses the same sentiment.

“I think we’ll just put a poultice on it and let you sleep through it. Hopefully, in the morning, the elfroot will have helped the stitches close the wound. You should wash your hair soon, though,” he says, and Daphne sighs.

“I just want to sleep,” she whines, and Cullen takes a moment to regard her from where he stands at her desk. She’s slumped at the edge of her bed, her hands fisted in her quilt. She’s looking down, her face streaked with long-dried tears. “How do you know so much about this? I thought you were a soldier.”

He approaches with a bowl full of elfroot and crystal grace. “I’ve lived in one Circle tower or another for a third of my life,” he reminds her. “Being a Templar is more than fighting off blood mages. I’ve had to patch up plenty of clumsy apprentices in my time.”

“Don’t they have healers?”

“In the event of a healer not being available, we had to learn to keep our charges alive without magic,” he explains. She hums.

“Why does this smell?”

“The more it smells, the more it will help,” he mutters. “I’ll bandage this to the best of my ability, but take it off before you go to sleep, so you don’t choke in the night.”

“Herald of Andraste. Slays a dragon, dies in her sleep choked by a bandage. Oh, the irony,” she says, offering Cullen her hands. She wiggles her fingers and he realizes with a start that she needs his help to stand. She stumbles a bit and his hand catches her waist. Her skin is every bit as soft as he had imagined and Daphne’s hand lifts to rest on his breastplate, and he’s transported back to that moment before, his eyes locked on the bow of her lips, her lashes fluttering – her eyes glassy and full of alcohol and pain – and he sighs.

He’s not doing it like this. His hand falls to her hip and his forehead drops to rest on hers, eyes closed. “You’re tired.”

“So are you,” she notices. He draws a shaky smile.

“You’re concussed and a little drunk.”

“I can’t confirm or deny that.”

“I’ll fetch you a clean tunic to sleep in,” he offers. She sighs and steps away, moving to shake Sera awake so she can go to sleep. He finds a white shift in her cupboard and hands it to her, standing a respectable distance away. She slips it on with some effort, keeping the brassiere and breeches on until he and Sera leave. Sera inspects the bandages with sleepy eyes, admits that she doesn’t know what she’s looking at, and congratulates Daphne on a dragon well killed before shuffling off, leaving Daphne and Cullen alone in the dying light.

“Thank you, Cullen.” Her voice is small and sincere, and she looks so frail with a slash of white wrapped around her throat and her hair wild around her shoulders, her bottom lip held captive between her teeth. He swallows hard and tries to ignore the silhouette of her curves through the white shift in the firelight.

“Of course, Hera–Daphne. I’m glad you’re alive.”

She smiles faintly. “It was a big dragon,” she repeats.

“I’m sure.”

Her hand lifts as if she’s about to reach for him again, her eyes swimming with unshed tears and golden light. He steps forward once. Her hand falls to her side and she shakes her head as if dismissing some internal monologue.

“Good night, Cullen.” Concealing any disappointment he may have felt, he bows somewhat chivalrously.

“Good night, Daphne. I’ll be along to check on you in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a surprising amount of feedback from chapter seven (like... the most out of any chapter) and my insides turned to mush with so much positivity, so here I am, throwing another chapter at you. 
> 
> This one should have been pretty familiar to readers of the earlier work. 
> 
> As always, [ come talk to me on tumblr](http://lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com)


	9. Somnolence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very frustrated Daphne takes matters into her own hands. Cullen wants to die, kind of, but not for the reasons you're probably thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the rating has jumped from T to E. The entire chapter is basically NSFW.

Cullen has been relentless.

Evidently, there is far much more to fighting than just ‘stick them with the sharp bits,’ and he’s taken it upon himself to throw every lesson he can at Daphne. And of course she learned how to parry and riposte when she learned to fence, but Cullen was right when he dismissed fencing as a parlor game for bored noble children—loathe as she is to admit it. Everything changed when she traded her epee for daggers, and he’s not content to let her learn only one school of weaponry, making it quite clear that Daphne should have a working knowledge of how to wield staves, pikes, longswords, maces, and any other weapon she might find on a battlefield and pick up upon finding herself unarmed.

She understands the concept and eventually might even learn to appreciate his insistence, but her aching shoulders and popping wrists have another opinion on Cullen’s curriculum. 

“Alright,” Cullen says, casting aside the wooden staff and pulling off his under armor. His shirt lifts with the motion and Daphne catches a glimpse of hard muscles and a trail of hair leading into his breeches. She suppresses a grin and looks at the toe of her boots. “Last task.”

“Same as always?” she asks, setting her blunted daggers on a table behind her. He’s tucking his shirt in and watching her carefully. That’s all they do now—watch each other.

He smirks. “Same as always.” Daphne decides it’s wholly unfair how attractive he is, with his disheveled curls and that damn scar turning every smile into a roguish grin. She rolls her shoulders out and falls into position and he does the same. They circle each other. It’s common practice for them to now end her training sessions with a hand-to-hand wrestling match, usually going until someone is pinned or cries mercy. The official reason is to test her reflexes and keep her unarmed combat skills sharp, but she wonders how much of that is true.

She melts into the shadows and skirts around him, trusting her stealth to keep her hidden until she flanks him, but she’s not quite good enough and he follows her, whipping around at the last minute when she jumps him. Instead of latching onto his shoulders she barrels into his front, and he pins her arms to her side and spins her so her back collides with the solid wall of his chest. She curls toward her knees to make herself smaller and he follows, brushes a hand high across her ribcage with a throaty chuckle at her ear that makes her knees shake, his thumb dragging across the underside of her breasts. Her heart stutters and they freeze for half a second before she shifts again, locking her knees and rolling her hips back into his.

He curses, flips her to face him, and searches her face. His breath is ragged, whether from exertion or arousal Daphne doesn’t care to know, choosing instead to take in the sliver of chest his shirt exposes and the tempting gleam in his burnished eyes. She watches him defiantly. His hand finds the swell of her hip and he pushes her backwards until she backs into a wall, her palms flat against the warm wood and lips parting under a hungry gaze. Cullen releases her hip and braces his fists on the wall, caging her with his arms, closing his eyes and leaning over her. His throat is right in front of her mouth and she’s tired of waiting. _Fuck the breach, fuck the Inquisition._ She closes the space between them and presses a kiss to his throat.

It’s enough to spur him into action. He growls against her hair and his hand flies to the back of her neck, pulling her face to his to claim her mouth in a punishing kiss. She gasps into his mouth and her arms wriggle between their bodies until they’re thrown around his neck and she’s standing on her toes, sucking his lower lip between her teeth and pulling. He grunts and his other hand ghosts over her hip, down her ass and grips her thigh, hitching it over his hip, and Daphne presses her back into the wall and slings her other leg forward, hooking her ankles and crushing his body to hers. He leans forward into the kiss before breaking away and she looks down into pupils blown wide with desire, with swollen lips and wild hair, his hands a bruising grip on her thigh and ass. She dares to smile slightly—a twitching of lips that he mirrors before diving towards her neck to bite at her throat and leave her gasping while tangling her fingers into his hair.

Cullen pulls away from the wall with her legs still wrapped around his waist and crashes onto the floor, his hands tugging at her shirt and seeking out her skin while she settles above him, her hips rolling over his. His cock twitches and he grips her hipbone, thumb digging into her skin at a spot that has her hips bucking against his length. He smirks at his discovery and digs again, and her hips jerk and she moans at the delicious friction. Cullen’s free hand finds the base of her skull and—

Pain lances down her spine, but she meets his lips again, his tongue thrusting hungrily into her mouth, his other hand abandoning her hip to knead her ass through her leather breeches and she winces against his lips because the hand at her neck is pulling her hair and it _stings—_

And Daphne bolts forward with a gasp, eyes opening into the empty darkness of her own cabin.

She groans in equal parts pain and frustration, clenching her thighs together in the vain hope of quelling her arousal, as a hand reaches behind herself to check her stitches. Her hair sticks to her skin from the poultice Cullen had applied and it’s tender to touch, but upon withdrawing her hand and holding it up to the moonlit window, she finds no blood on her fingers. She turns carefully to inspect her pillow, finding smeared poultice and a bit of blood. She wrinkles her nose and turns the pillow over before lying back down and sighing.

Such a good dream.

Daphne smacks the bed with an open hand and tries to ignore the remnants of the dream flickering on the ceiling above her.

_His hands wide on her ribcage_

_His teeth at her throat_

_His cock hard beneath her_

She whines childishly and her fingers play at the edge of her smalls. She knew in the midst of it that it was just a dream. There were signs; he has no way of knowing about the spot on her hips that makes her jerk like that, and their wrestling matches have never gotten that… _intimate._ In fact, it’s always flying elbows and exasperated grunting, usually ending in a sweaty heap upon the floor before Cullen has the decency to hoist her up and correct her technique.

It felt so real, though, and perhaps that’s the point of sex dreams, to feel every drag and pull and bite. She sits up and pulls her night shirt off without disturbing her stitches, throwing it on the floor beside her bed and lying back. Her dream isn’t about to leave her anytime soon, so she might as well take care of herself. Her skin gleams pale in the moonlight from her window. She drags a thumb along the underside of her breast, barely grazing it, closing her eyes and willing Cullen’s hand to replace hers. His eyes flash behind her eyelids, bright and hungry in the firelight. Her lips quirk in a small smile and she hitches her hips to work off her smalls, afterwards finally allowing her shaking thighs to fall open. A finger finds her clit and she circles it once, twice, her hips jerking forward and a moan escaping her mouth as she imagines Cullen’s hand.

Would he keep his gloves on?

In her mind, it’s Cullen who slides a finger inside her, then another, his teeth dragging across her collarbone, the heel of his palm rubbing roughly against her clit. He flicks his tongue over her nipple before sucking it into his mouth, watching her brow furrow and her lips fall open as she rocks into his hand, allowing the midnight stillness to swallow her moans. He’d withdraw his fingers, tease her with a finger running along her slit and bring his hand to the light, so they can both see her slick arousal coating the fine leather of his gloves, and he’d bring his hand to his mouth, tasting her as he worked the glove off with his teeth.

Would he kneel above her between her thighs, staring at her like a man dying of thirst? Would his eyes trace the curves of her body until he found her spread for him, ready and wanting? Would he kiss and bite his way up her body until he nestled his face into her neck, aligning his hard length at her entrance, and would he press within her gently, reverently, allowing them both to bask in the feeling of him filling her completely?

Or would he take her without mercy, flipping her onto her knees and fucking her relentlessly from behind? Would he roll beneath her and set a vicious rhythm with his nails digging into the supple flesh of her ass, pull her hair back and expose her neck to his hungry mouth, leaving bruises and bite marks in the wake of his ardor?

Her toes flex and curl into her sheet as her muscles spasm around wild fingers. She takes her other hand, previously a fist pressed to her mouth, and sets a rapid, swirling rhythm around her clit, and in her mind it’s Cullen, chanting reverently into her ear, turning her name into a prayer, _Daphne Daphne Daphne,_ coaxing her orgasm as she grinds her clit into the base of his cock, swallowing her broken moans and holding her as she falls apart above him, one hand bracing her back and the other stroking her thigh. Her thighs clench around her wrists and her back arches off the bed, eyes screwed shut and mouth open in a silent scream, her fingers curling desperately inside herself until she breaks.

She withdraws one hand and absently seeks out her discarded shift to wipe it clean, the other swirling languid circles around her clit as she schools her breathing into a normal rhythm. She wipes the tears out of her eyes and sighs, cleaning off her other hand and pulling the sheet over her naked body, smiling drunkenly into the darkness as sleep claims her again.

* * *

Cullen awakens at dawn, much as he always does, his mind almost immediately on Daphne and how she might have fared through the night. He _hopes_ she did as he asked and removed the bandage from her neck before falling asleep, knowing he’d left her to her own devices with it still wrapped around her throat, but he knows she’s smarter than half the Inquisition gives her credit for, and chases the worry from his mind. He rises from his cot, rubbing the kink from his neck as usual, and opens the flap of his tent to let in some light while he searches for a candle. His skin is stiff with dried sweat building up over the last couple of days and decides it’s time for a bath, so he throws on the shirt from last night and begins gathering fresh clothes and his requisitioned soap.

The air is bracing when he steps outside, the dark sky slowly giving way to the hazy pink of dawn, marred by the swirling green of the breach in the corner of his eye. He scowls up at it, the reminder of everything he’s working for and—

Everything he can’t yet have.

 _“When the breach is closed…”_ her voice, sweet and small, echoes in his ears, and he finds himself smiling as he makes his way through the village to the bathhouse behind the Chantry. His eyes linger over her front door and he hesitates. To wake her now, before even the sun has shown itself, would be terribly selfish of him, if only to ease his worry that she might have suffered through the night. _She’s stronger than she looks,_ he reminds himself firmly, forcing his legs forward. He forces himself to focus on the sound of his feet moving over the ground. First the crunching of snow, and then silence over hard-packed earth, and then heavy footfalls on stone steps. Snow, steps, earth, steps, snow, earth.

It works, and by the time he looks up he’s in front of the bathhouse. It’s mercifully empty, as he expected, and so he claims a cask in the back, picking up a wash rag and a pail of water off the fire pit before stripping off in his corner of the glorified shed. The air bites at his bare skin and spurs him into efficiency. Maybe when this is over he can afford a genuine soak. He soaks the rag in the warm water, scrubs at his skin, repeats until he can soap up, taking care to rub the knots out of his calf, his shoulder, his bicep. He lathers soap in his hands and runs them through damp hair, scratching at his scalp, allowing the small pleasure of hands in his hair that he so rarely affords himself.

 _Wonder what_ her _hands might feel like in my hair,_ a small part of him muses, but he frowns. Her eyes flash in the dark in front of him. _Or how they’ll feel wrapped around—_

Cullen takes the pail of water and dumps it over his head, soapy water cascading off his body and sloshing around his ankles in the tub he stands in. No time for thoughts like that, no space in his mind for such distractions. His cock twitches in complaint and he scowls down at it, taking the bath sheet he’d brought and scrubbing himself dry. _Stop._ He dresses quickly, smalls and pants and shirt then jerkin and socks and finally boots and stop thinking about her _hands,_ man. He scrubs a hand over his face—not bad enough to shave yet, so he doesn’t bother, depositing his dirty clothes in a hamper by the door for the laundry as he makes his way out of the bathhouse, the sky lighter and signs of life starting to emerge. He jogs back to camp and trades his leather jerkin for his gambeson and buckles himself into his armor.

Daphne rises early, does she not? He’s anxious to check on her and he’s sure she’ll be hungry so he finds himself in the Chantry kitchen, begging a roll or two and perhaps some sausage, and because the sister is so charmed by him and his wet curls, she puts everything on a tray and adds some cheese and an orange and shoos him out with a smile. Cullen winds his way through Haven and up to her front door. He shifts the tray into one hand and knocks lightly upon the door, trusting that she’d be awake by now.

No answer comes, and so, frowning, Cullen knocks again with more force. He holds his ear to the door and no sound comes forth, no rustling of fabrics or crackling fire, and with worry freshly stoked within his belly he tries the door, finding it mercifully unlocked. He lets himself into the dark cabin and his eyes find her body on the bed, illuminated by the dull glow of morning streaming in through the window above her, and he sees her back rise and fall with a sleepy sigh.

 _Asleep. She’s only asleep._ He curses his anxiety and sets the tray of food on her desk, finding a matchbook and lighting candles in the dark space. Behind him, he hears sheets rustle and a shifting of limbs upon a mattress; no doubt, his carefully quiet actions were still enough to rouse her, and so he turns toward the bed with an apology on his lips that dies out the moment he sees her.

Naked.

Cullen swallows hard and immediately diverts his gaze, but a grunt from the bed snaps his eyes back to her form. She’s on her stomach, thankfully, but the sheet draped over her has twisted around her legs to the point that her entire back is exposed to him, one leg thrown out of the covers to dangle enticingly off the edge of the bed. _Maker, her legs are long._ He tears his eyes away from the tempting length of flesh and sinew to her face, pillowed on folded arms and screwed into an expression of pain or fear. He watches her eyes flit behind closed lids and her leg jerks and she moans into her pillow, tight and pained, and he doesn’t stop himself from coming forward with a lit candle to place on her nightstand and touching her back carefully. She twitches under his touch and rolls away, onto her back, and Cullen isn’t fast enough to look at anything else but her breasts, pert nipples tight in the morning air.

“Maker have mercy,” he curses roughly. He’s a lecher. He’s a fiend. She’s having a nightmare and he’s staring at her naked and vulnerable body as if he’d never seen a woman in his life. _Maybe no one so perfect as her,_ a voice in the back of his head intones, and Daphne whimpers again, her hand swiping the space in front of her. “Keep running.” Her voice is hoarse and desperate, low enough that he almost doesn’t hear her, but she repeats herself twice.

He sits at the edge of the bed and shrugs his surcoat off, prepared to throw it over her chest when her eyes fly open and she rises onto her elbows, immediately making eye contact with him. The haze of fear leaves her eyes and confusion takes its place as she looks from the surcoat in his hands to his eyes, carefully blank and determinedly not drifting farther down than her chin, to her own breasts, as if surprised they exist. “I’m naked,” she finally says.

Cullen clears his throat. “That you are.” She blushes furiously and bites the inside of her cheek, pushing herself to sitting, situating her sheet over her lap.

“You’re in my room.” He nods once, his arm finally tiring and dropping the surcoat into her lap. Her fingers distractedly burrow into the fur collar. “You’re in my room… and I’m naked.”

He stands immediately as if scalded, her own words reminding him of the impropriety of the situation. He deserves to burn. Or freeze. Or be thrown in the stocks. “Forgive me. I came to deliver breakfast and check on you, and feared the worst when you didn’t answer my knocking, and—”

She shushes him and looks out the window, judging the light. “I _am_ usually awake by now, aren’t I?” She shrugs his coat on and throws her legs over edge of the bed, yawning. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Cullen chokes a laugh. “I’m the one standing in your room like a pervert, uninvited, and you’re apologizing?”

She grins at him and stands, the hem of his coat falling around her thighs. Her legs are impossibly long. The lecher at his shoulder wonders what it might be like to have them wrapped around his hips and he shifts his weight. She holds the front of it closed with one hand and pads across the room to the tray of food at her desk. “Uninvited perhaps, but certainly not unwelcome. In fact, I should thank you, as I believe you rescued me from quite an unpleasant dream.” He frowns as she pops a cube of cheese into her mouth before lifting the tray and carrying it over to the bed. “I have some wine in that chest,” she says, gesturing in the corner.

“Do you mind if I ask about your dream, unpleasant as it was?” he asks, unlatching the chest and pulling a bottle out. She shakes her head and rips one of the rolls in half.

“I don’t mind at all, but I couldn’t tell you what it was about,” she responds with her own frown, setting her roll down and taking the bottle. She uncorks it and swigs straight from the bottle, ever the epitome of grace and class.

“There are glasses,” he admonishes gently, peeling the orange. She shrugs. “Couldn’t remember the dream?”

“Mmm. I think it was about what happened in the Fade.” She starts slicing the sausage for them both as she continues the story. “I have dreams like this often, and I can’t remember shit except for a lot of green… like my mark.”

He frowns, watching her face as she continues preparing food. She eats a slice of sausage and catches him staring, blushing slightly under his gaze. “You said something. ‘Keep running.’” Her brows furrow as she tries to recall it.

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she says, snatching half the orange from his hand. She wiggles a wedge free and pops it in her mouth. “I fucking love oranges, by the way.”

He grins. “Good to know.” She slices some cheese and holds it out to him, and he wonders if she knows that his appetite is nonexistent most mornings. As it is, he takes it and eats it, because she is naked under his coat and she’s feeding him, and damn it all if he can’t revel in the domesticity of it for even half a second. The sharpness on his tongue is welcome and he finds his stomach twisting for more. He bites his gloves off and picks up some sausage, raising his eyes to hers and finding her staring at his hands with a blush burning down her chest. “Alright, Trevelyan?”

She blinks and swallows, lifting the bottle of wine from her lap to her mouth. “I’m fine,” she chokes out, shoving bread into her mouth so as not to speak. He lifts a brow and takes the wine from her, stealing a sip and situating it between his thighs.

“Beyond that dream, was the rest of your night alright?” he asks, gesturing to her neck. “How do you feel?”

“Oh, it stings like a terror,” she says, not meeting his gaze, “but the rest of my night was,” she swallows air, “fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” he says, not pushing the fact that she’s about as red as his coat and suddenly not meeting his eyes. They eat in companionable silence and he offers her the rest of his orange half when chewing and swallowing becomes too much of a chore. She accepts it with a smile and he moves the tray and bottle of wine to the floor. “I’d like to look at your neck, if you don’t mind.”

She shakes her head as best she can and turns on the bed, scooting to rest between his thighs, much like they sat last night. The only difference is that she is naked this time, he’s been in a state of shameful semi-arousal since he walked in, and they’re both sober enough to regret any indiscretions that might take place. He tugs at the fur collar to better see her neck and she complies, slipping it off her shoulders and eating her orange quietly. He shifts her hair and unsticks several tendrils that have glued to the poultice overnight. The gash is still pink, but it doesn’t look raw and the stitches seem to be holding it together nicely.

“What hurts worse?” he asks, sifting through hair to check the section in her scalp. She hisses as he pulls hair close to the wound.

“That part right there,” she mumbles, fingers clenching in the sheet. He murmurs an apology and she stays still so he can get it over with. Her hair parts easily around the tear in her skin and he checks it as gently as possible, satisfied that she didn’t rip anything overnight. He withdraws his hands and she sighs.

“All good?”

He chuckles, daring to shift her hair off her shoulders. It’s a knotted mess. “All good. Give it a few more days to rest before running off again.” She rolls her shoulders and the furred collar slips further, and he’s tall enough to see that her front is totally exposed, the front of his coat gaping open to reveal her breasts again. She brings another wedge of fruit to her mouth, either unaware of her exposure or uncaring. He watches the candlelight flicker across her skin, judges the weight of her breasts by how they might fill his hands, imagining his hands reaching around her, leaning her back into his chest, mouth at her throat and flesh in his hands—

“Cullen?”

He clears his throat and discreetly adjusts his cock in his pants. “I apologize,” he says hoarsely. “My mind got away from me.”

She shrugs his mantle back around her shoulders and turns to face him with a grin. “Oh? Where did it go?”

He regards her solemnly. “Merely considering how very difficult you’ve made it to keep our deal.” Her eyes darken slightly and her knees, either unconsciously or in a calculated move, fall open the slightest bit.

“Oh.” He casts a lingering gaze over the sliver of skin his coat reveals, dipping below the valley of her breasts and finally closing beneath her belly button, his fingers suddenly tingling for the need of her skin beneath his touch, and he licks his lips. His hand finds her jaw and he pushes hair out of her face, thumb lingering near the point where her pulse hammers in her throat.

“I should go before I do something I might regret,” he says, and she frowns slightly.

“Would you?” she asks so softly he nearly misses it. “Regret it, I mean.”

He studies her, eyes a dark jade in the morning light, lips pursed in the slightest invitation.

“Not in the slightest,” he admits. His hand traces down the cord of muscle in the side of her neck, brushes the collar of his mantle aside. They let it fall, exposing a narrow shoulder.

She runs her hand over his, watches her delicate fingers trace the network of thin scars over his knuckles, looks up at him. “Well then. Why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I?” he repeats, closing the distance between them. He hesitates; this could be a huge mistake, this is too soon, we made a deal, damn it all. His hand curves along her jaw and she tilts her face towards his, not making the move this time, happy to let him make the choice. “We shouldn’t,” he breathes against her lips, his forehead resting against hers. She flutters a smile at him.

“Then we won’t.” Her chin tilts away, but the pressure of his hand keeps her from moving far.

“But… _Maker_ , I want to.”

She huffs a laugh. “Then kiss me.”

And so he does, and he hates himself for every time he’d wanted to but denied the opportunity, because her lips are _perfect_ , she tastes like citrus and wine, and even through layers of sweat and poultice and blood, he can smell _her_ and it’s intoxicating. She grazes her teeth along his lower lip and he responds with a flicking tongue, which makes her giggle and pull back to look at him, and he’s lost to her. He’s ruined himself. The Maker hung the stars in her eyes and if he should die, right now with the taste of her on his lips, he wouldn’t regret a fucking thing. Her fingers curl around the lip of his breastplate and she buries her face in his neck, nearly sitting in his lap. He lets a hand fall to her thigh as the other carefully works the tangles from her hair, as if she hadn’t just stolen and chained his heart with a single kiss.

“I’ll need to leave soon,” he murmurs into her hair. She shakes her head and his armor creaks with the tightening of her fingers, as if she could hold him there. “I do. And I need this back.” He plucks at his surcoat, still drowning her body.

She withdraws from his grasp reluctantly and stands, brazenly letting the only thing maintaining her decency (and his rapidly dwindling self-control) fall to the ground at her feet. “ _Maker,_ Daphne,” he groans, tearing his gaze away from her ass as she bends to collect clothes. She turns to face him as she throws a long-sleeved blouse over her head before stepping into a simple, sleeveless green frock with a front-lacing bodice, tying it up with deft fingers and a smirk. He collects his abandoned surcoat, glowering at her as he stalks forward and uncovers the bowl of sickly-smelling poultice on her desk, bidding her turn around and expose her stitches. She turns and bows her head obediently, only wincing twice under his careful touch, and piles her hair on top of her head as he winds a fresh bandage around her throat.

“I can’t prepare you for the questions and rumors that are bound to follow with this bandage,” he warns, “other than to be patient and remember that you’re a champion in their eyes.”

“Bravado is encouraged?”

“Heavily.” He ties it off with a loose knot and she lets her hair tumble down her back once more. “And I can’t do anything for the bit inside your mass of hair, so do your best not to pick at it.” She makes a face at him as she pulls her top layer of hair into a braid, tying it off with a short cord. “I need to see to the troops, and then I’ll see you in the war room.” Daphne nods and walks him toward the door, stopping his exit with a tug on his wrist.

“Your gloves,” she murmurs, offering them to him, and he huffs his gratitude while wiggling his fingers into the warm leather. They regard each other another moment before he bends to place a final kiss on her lips.

“Good morning, Commander,” she says sweetly as he opens the door.

“Good morning, Lady Herald.”

She closes the door behind him and he finds himself wrestling the smile off his face with every step toward the soldiers’ camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be out of town tomorrow morning until Sunday afternoon, so I figured I'd leave you guys with something tasty, wink wonk. Kudos and comments sustain me. As always, [check me out on tumblr](http://lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com) for some meta and drabbles about these crazy kids.


	10. A Very Stubborn Door Indeed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne gets a strange letter, and the Inquisition finally makes a decision regarding the Breach. (Do they decide to throw goats at it? Probably not, but the Avvar would approve.)

She hasn’t told them.

She stands far from Cassandra, arms crossed tight against her chest, eyes trained blindly on a missive from a knight-templar out of Therinfal. Cullen and Leliana continue their circular arguments: the mages can amplify the mark, the Templars can weaken the breach, the mages will bring abominations with them, the Templars will cast an intimidating shadow over southern Thedas that the Inquisition isn’t quite equipped to handle. It’s been the same argument since she returned from Val Royeaux.

Daphne had hoped that her wound would cut her some slack with the advisory council, that maybe they wouldn’t argue so _loudly_ in her general direction, but the most she got was an appraising glance from Leliana and the slightest smile from Cullen, so brief in its passing that she might have imagined it.

The morning they shared has no bearing on his countenance now, with his rolling eyes and impatient scoffs. Daphne has half a mind to tell him that he’s acting like her sisters fighting over what color dress to wear to a party.

The brief amusement dies in her mind as quickly as it had been born, the letter resting twisted in her pocket and burning an anxious hole into her gut.

Her sister is in Redcliffe.

She hasn’t told them, she doesn’t know how or that she will at all, because she knows what they’ll say.

She’s made her case, knows that if she were to throw the letter onto the table that she’d be accused of nepotism, of putting her family before the cause, but she knows her sister and she knows that something is wrong.

As Cullen launches into assault strategies—failing ones, to make his point—regarding Redcliffe, Daphne recites the letter in her head, read twenty times since a courier had slipped it into her hand before lunch.

_Flower,_

_I’ve joined my friends from home in Ferelden. There was nothing back across the sea for me, you must understand. I saw the opportunity for growth and I took it._

_I know you’ve paid a visit to our new friends. You **must** check in with him again—we’ll all be bereft to miss the opportunity to see you again. _

_I’d come to visit, but I’ve found myself far too busy here to make the time._

_All my love,  
Blizzard_

_The next time you’re in town you should go to the docks. The lake can be quite diverting._

She frowns into the air. Why did Eliza use their old childhood nicknames? Why did she tell her to go to the lake?

There could be thousands of logical explanations, but the one Daphne chooses to fixate upon is dramatic and highly unlikely: She’s written in code.

She picks through the letter, short as it is, to divine the true meaning of her seemingly benign words. She left Ostwick because there was nothing there, coming to Redcliffe with her peers from the Circle. She knows Daphne met with Alexius, but news travels fast and she’s not surprised.

She’s asking for help. Intervention. Eliza must not know about Alexius’ trap, or she’d have warned Daphne to stay away; there’s also a chance that this could be more bait, but the penmanship is true to Eliza’s spidery scrawl and the names she picked are too personal to be a Venatori lure.

_I’d come to visit, but I’ve found myself too busy…_

Daphne knows her sister like she knows the freckles on her arms. She’s selfless to a fault and has a strong sense of fraternity. If she could, she’d have brought her people to Haven as soon as the wind turned. The fact that she hasn’t means she’s being held there, and probably very carefully watched. She sighs and squeezes her hand into a fist, watching as the stitches in her gloves stretches over tight knuckles.

 _If_ she really did write in code.

 _Let’s go with yes,_ the decider in her mind proclaims. She squares her shoulders.

“Enough of this,” she finally says, stopping Cullen mid-sentence as his eyes swivel to meet hers. His irritation melts into something softer, but his defensive edge is still present. “I’m the one closing the breach, and you’ve said thousands of times that it’s my decision. I don’t know why we’re still arguing about this when I’ve said, thousands of times, that I want the mages to help.”

Cullen opens his mouth to argue—again—and she raises a palm, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. “I’m not going to do nothing while a hostile foreign presence puts down roots on Fereldan soil. The Templar matter has presented nothing as urgent as time magic and indentured servitude, so we’ll address them _after_ the breach is closed.” She sends a pointed look to Cullen, pushing the note from Therinfal in Leliana’s direction. “Have your people look into this while we mobilize our forces for Redcliffe.”

Leliana nods with a gracefully hidden smirk, delicately folding the letter and pocketing it for later perusal.

“There’s another matter I need to take care of in Redcliffe before we meet with Alexius,” Daphne says, pulling the twisted paper from her pocket and smoothing it out in her hands. She frowns into her sister’s handwriting before dropping it onto the table. Cassandra is the first to pick it up; she reads over it, deciphers no meaning from the seemingly innocuous words, and passes it around the table. Daphne watches silently as they read, anxiety coiling around her heart. Cullen frowns a question at her, but she shakes her head, waits for him to take his turn reading it.

“Those are code names,” Leliana finally says, once the letter returns to Daphne. The Herald nods.

“It’s from my sister. Flower is something my father has called me since I was a child. Blizzard is something I started calling her when her magic manifested.”

“A frost mage?” Cullen asks, and Daphne nods.

“She was also training to become a Knight Enchanter before the Circles fell, but that’s beside the point.” She exhales slowly, steeling herself, “She’s in Redcliffe.”

“Why haven’t you thought to tell us sooner?”

Her eyes narrow and she crosses her arms over her chest. “What would you have done if I’d told you immediately? Accuse me of favoring the mages because I knew it’d save my sister? You think I don’t know what that looks like? That I care more about myself and my family than the welfare of Thedas as a whole?”

Cullen finds himself outplayed before the argument even begins, so he sets his hands on the pommel of his sword and turns his eyes to Leliana and Josephine.

“She’s right. It’s important we don’t let this detail slip,” Josephine murmurs, and Leliana taps her lip.

“This could be a good thing. What has she said?”

Daphne takes a deep breath and presents the paper again, speaking even as Leliana reaches for it. “She left Ostwick with the rest of her Circle, knows I met with Alexius, asked for our intervention, and said in no certain terms that she can’t leave or she’d already be here.” She pauses, recalling the letter in her mind as Leliana reads over it, face going dark. “She also told me to go to the docks. She might want to meet with me.”

Josephine clears her throat. “Is it possible this letter is fabricated?” she asks delicately. Cullen nods with a clenched jaw—that was his first reaction, but Daphne shakes her head.

“The names she chose are too personal and her handwriting is unmistakable.”

Cullen frowns, doesn’t want to voice his next concern, but does so anyway because it _must_ be addressed, “Is it not also possible she was coerced? Her identity discovered?”

This evidently offends the Herald, as she presses her fists into the war table and leans into his space. “She was Harrowed at seventeen. Her willpower is beyond any other Mage of her age. She’d sooner _die_ than let anyone touch her.”

Cullen bristles. “You must see my concern, we can’t know for sure that this isn’t another trap—”

“For Maker’s sake, I’ll have a Seeker _and_ a Grey Warden with me.”

“So you’ll be taking Blackwall with you?” Leliana asks, smoothly ignoring the tension growing between Cullen and Daphne. Josephine suppresses a grin and studies some correspondence that found itself in front of her.

“Yes. Dorian will be meeting us in the village, and Solas will be traveling with us. He has some business in the hills… I couldn’t be bothered to listen to his explanation.”

Despite himself, Cullen snorts. Daphne and Cassandra shoot him an amused glance, but he remembers that he’s supposed to be cross with them both and glowers across the table at them.

“When are you leaving?” he asks tightly.

“Dawn.”

* * *

“So you get a strange letter from someone who _could_ be your sister telling you to meet her at the docks and you just… decide to trust this person, who could also _not_ be your sister, and show up to the docks.”

“Yes.”

“With no meeting place or time designated, _how_ are you supposed to know where to go or who to talk to?”

Daphne shrugs.

“You are far too trustworthy to be in charge of this Inquisition,” Dorian remarks, and Daphne turns her head specifically to roll her eyes at him.

“Not in charge,” she says, turning back around. “Just the Herald.”

“Which, arguably, would imply leadership.”

“The only thing I’m in charge of is getting this fucking breach closed,” Daphne mutters. Dorian snorts. “After that, I’m sure I’ll be in charge of getting my ass back to Ostwick before my mother blows an artery.”

“Ahhh,” Dorian says, reminiscent of a purr. “I knew I liked you. My daddy issues pair perfectly with your mummy issues.”

It’s Daphne’s turn to snort. “We can flirt later. Help me look for a tall blonde woman with blue eyes.”

“You’ve just described half of southern Thedas,” Blackwall says through a laugh, and Daphne sneers at him.

“Should we walk around or stay in place?” she asks into thin air and Cassandra, who has until now stayed silent, finally answers.

“Walk around. The docks are quite expansive, from what I remember of the last time we were here.” Daphne recalls her awkward conversation with Connor Guerrin and nods, taking her advice. “We should stick together, however. You’re the only one who knows what your sister looks like, after all.”  

“Well, she _could_ be in disguise,” Daphne admits, and Dorian throws a sharp bark of laughter.

“Perfect!” he intones to the heavens, the sarcasm in his tone indicating that this situation is, in fact, far from perfect. Daphne scowls and marches down the docks, scanning every person who’ll meet her eyes. For a village that’s been taken over by hostile foreign magisters, Redcliffe is unusually populous.

She’s about to pretend to stop at a book stall when a hooded figure shoulders past her far too forcefully to be accidental (and Fereldans always stop to apologize and this hooded figure did _not)._ Daphne turns to watch –or perhaps say something to— the tall, robed stranger, and just as she takes a step a stiff breeze lifts the bottom of their cloak and reveals a familiar pair of white halla leather boots.

The hood stops at the door of an abandoned cabin and turns its face toward Daphne, and opens the door before disappearing inside.

It’s Eliza.

It must be, or someone has stolen her favorite boots, which is honestly likely in the current state of the world. Daphne puts all her hope on the former thought and quickens her pace, motioning for her party to follow her. Upon reaching the cabin she finds the door is locked, which Daphne must admit is smart, if not completely infuriating. She stoops to pick it, ear pressed to the door, and when the last tumbler clicks and she tries the handle, an electric buzz shocks her hand and the door locks itself again.

“Oh, you brat,” Daphne mutters at the door. If there were any doubt in her mind that it’s her sister, that doubt has been erased. She picks the lock, tries the handle, and gets shocked again. The lock predictably resets itself.

“It might be warded,” Dorian supplies.

“Could you get rid of it?”

“I could.”

Daphne huffs. “Will you?” Dorian raises an eyebrow and purses his lips, and if Daphne weren’t so frustrated with the fact that her sister was being a complete _pest_ on the other side of that door, she’d be confident that Dorian will soon become her best friend. “Please?” she adds for good measure. He smiles.

“I’ll give it a go.”

He steps to the door, places one hand on the knob and the other palm flat against the wood, and closes his eyes. After a moment of muttering, a spike of ice erupts directly in front of his face, an inch away from his nose. He spits a flame from his finger tips and turns an affronted glare to Daphne. “Your sister is not a very pleasant person.”

She frowns. “Did you… cancel the ward?”

“No. It’s probably got some sort of key, like a password. She must be very skilled in defensive magic.”

Daphne half-smiles, a little proud and a lot annoyed. But what could be a password? She stoops to the door again, picks it, and before testing the doorknob whispers into the wood, “Flower.”

The knob buzzes. She kicks the door, which freezes the toe of her boot.

“Take care not to lose your patience,” Cassandra warns. “You’ll draw suspicion.”

Daphne takes a deep breath and looks around, smiling awkwardly at a fish vendor. “Lost my key,” she says, and he turns away, embarrassed at having been caught watching. She regains her bearings, turns to the door once more, and repeats the process, this time opting for “Blizzard.”

No such luck.

This continues for ten minutes, her hand now so numb that Blackwall has volunteered to be the doorknob tester. She exhausts her knowledge of potential passwords: Toffee, Eliza’s favorite sweet; Papillon, her grandmother’s nickname for her; Lydia, her former first enchanter; all her other siblings’ names, as well as her parents’. She breaks two lock picks and is about to dig a hole under the door when a memory, clear as water, invades her mind:

_Eliza is hiding somewhere in the garden and she won’t answer anyone but the birds. Some lark will sing and she’ll whistle back, and Daphne winds her way through the rose bushes, listening for birdsongs until she gets smart enough to whistle herself. Eliza replies in kind and they settle on their own respective melodies, repeating them until Daphne finds Eliza with a pile of daisies in her lap, a crown of flowers resting upon her head._

She’s not sure why she didn’t think of it sooner and actually feels quite stupid that it took her this long, but she fishes out her last lockpick and works the lock, her fingertips resting on the knob, before whistling a short, four-note melody. A faint whistle from within answers, and the doorknob mercifully turns under her hand.

“Remind me to ask you about that later,” Dorian says, following Daphne through the door. The shady figure has abandoned the hooded cloak, standing against the west wall of the single-room cabin with her hands in a twist, white-blonde hair in a careful topknot, and a hopeful smile on her face. Daphne falls into her arms immediately, snaking her arms around the taller woman’s waist, not daring to believe any possibility that she’s dreaming, because she’s missed her sister so thoroughly that to wake now would be a devastating heartbreak. Eliza giggles into her hair and rubs a hand down her back and they pull away, sizing each other up. She hasn’t changed, save for the new enchanter’s robes and the slightest hint of fatigue in her eyes, bluer than winter and swimming in unshed tears.

“Look at you!” Eliza says, brushing dust off of Daphne’s jacket, noting the weapons strapped to her back and the faintest scar at the corner of her eye from the time her friend punched her face open. “You’ve… my, you’ve grown so much in four months.”

“Has it been four months?” Daphne asks. “It feels like it’s been a bloody eternity.”

Behind her, Cassandra huffs, pulling Daphne out of her reunion haze.

“Liza! Please allow me to introduce my traveling companions: Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast, Warden Blackwall, and Dorian Pavus. Inquisition… and Dorian… my sister, Elizabeth Trevelyan.”

Eliza curtsies, her voice careful. “Lord Pavus and I have already met, but it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m on your side,” Dorian assures, bowing slightly. It’s the first earnest thing he’s said since Daphne’s met him and she gives him a look, which he shoos away with a crinkled nose. “May I ask why you chose this ramshackle cabin, of all places, and such… extensive measures on warding the door?”

Eliza frowns. “My letter could have gotten intercepted.”

“I read that letter, Lady Trevelyan,” says Cassandra. “Nobody could have deciphered your intentions from that text.”

“Daphne did,” she says plainly, looking between her sister and the Seeker. Cassandra purses her lips, but doesn’t argue the point.

“Could you hear us outside?” Daphne asks, now slightly embarrassed. Eliza snickers and nods. “Did you _know_ it was us?”

“I grew fearful when Lord Pavus tried to dissemble the ward, but my concerns were assuaged when you kicked the door… as if it were stubborn.”

Daphne scowls. “Could have helped.”

“I could have,” she says, parroting Dorian. The two mages share a smirk.

“Not to cut the reunion short,” Blackwall says patiently, “but the Lady Herald said you might have more information regarding Magister Alexius.”

The smirk drops off Eliza’s face and she crosses her arms, nodding once. Daphne knows this pose: straight shoulders, crossed arms, dropped chin. She’s in business mode. “Of course, forgive me.” She paces to a corner of the room. “You know about the time magic?”

Daphne and Dorian nod.

“And you know this meeting is a trap.”

Daphne nods again. She’d prepared herself for the very real possibility that it was a trap, but hearing it confirmed in such plain language—from her sister, no less—sends a shiver of dread lacing through her palms. “We’ve got spies inside the castle via a secret entrance. We planned for a trap.”

Eliza loses some of her stiffness. “Thank the Maker.”

“Dorian plans on being there himself under the pretense of learning more about the Venatori, perhaps to change his mind and join, and I will show up for ‘negotiations’ with Cassandra and Blackwall. Our agents inside are only there for crowd control in case things go sideways. We’re on the defense here.”

“If he attacks?” she asks quickly.

Daphne shrugs. “We kill him and continue negotiations with Fiona.” Eliza balks and Daphne is sure she’s thrown off by her cavalier attitude. _It’s not every day your baby sister decides murder is a good backup plan._

“What if he manages to kill you?” she asks. Cassandra narrows her eyes, probably curious about Daphne’s opinion on the possibility.

She opens her left palm and stares down at it. The mark sputters quietly under her glove, light unseen but still easily felt. “I have a feeling I’m too valuable of a piece for him to just kill me.”

“Daph…”

Daphne shakes her head, correctly interpreting every feeling of fear and trepidation in that single syllable. “I can’t let Tevinter cultists take Redcliffe.”

“If this is about me—”

“I made my mind up before I even got your letter, Liza. I _promise_ I’ve got a clear head on this.”

It’s something her father likes to say. _‘Is your head clear?’_ He said it before Daphne left for the Conclave, and he probably said it before Eliza left for Redcliffe. Liza smiles and Daphne responds in kind, squeezing her sister’s hand in a gesture of affection and reassurance.

“When is this happening?” Eliza asks, clearing tears from her voice with a small cough.

“We have a camp in the basalt columns east of here,” Cassandra says. “Dorian will stay at the inn tonight and we will stay in camp. Negotiations will commence in the morning, Maker willing.” Eliza nods, offering a grateful smile that Cassandra returns with a small quirk of her lips.

“You can’t be there. At least not _there._ Somewhere in the castle is fine, if you’re allowed, but…”

“I understand,” Eliza says, squeezing Daphne’s shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow. The sun will set soon. You need to make it to camp.”

Daphne nods as her companions make for the door, which has re-warded itself. Eliza gestures at it and it takes a moment for Daphne to realize she needs to whistle at it again. She does so and Eliza replies, the door unlocks itself, and her companions file out. Daphne offers Eliza one last hug.

“Au revoir, Blizzard.”

“À bientôt, Flower.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have risen from the dead. Expect... nothing. Expect nothing, but please know that I absolutely HAVE NOT forgotten all you lovely people or this story, and to those of you on Tumblr who always leave me lovely notes and encouragement, you mean the world, and moon, and sun and stars to me, and this is for you guys. Bless y'all. 
> 
> Don't forget to check out my Tumblr, which is home to a few drabbles and a lot of shitposts. [Link here! ](http://lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com)


	11. Pity Seek What We Might Lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisition must deal with the aftermath of Daphne's decision in Redcliffe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't get used to it, kids. I either update twice in a week or once every three months. There is no in between. 
> 
> Chapter title is a line from the song [_stranger than earth_ by Purity Ring. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VImONOaMMCI)

If Eliza were the type of person who paces, she would. She is, fortunately, not that type of person, and so instead of pacing she watches her friend Tara do it for her from the comfort of her stool in the tavern. At least Tara is a silent pacer, and watching her wear a hole in the floorboards is decent meditation. She advances toward the window, peeks in the general direction of Redcliffe Castle, rocks twice on her heel, and swivels; then takes ten steps toward Eliza’s table, winces in the face of Eliza’s careful passivity, rocks twice on her heel, swivels.

Tara is the only one who knows the Herald is her sister, and it’s her penchant for taking everything too personally that has reduced her to pacing on Eliza’s behalf, whose own mind has gone down thousands of avenues amid waiting for Daphne to return. Eliza cannot bring herself to panic, or wonder, or worry about Daphne, because then there would be a _reason_ to panic, or wonder, or worry, and she’s not going to give the universe any possibility of making her anxiety a reality. As usual, as she was trained from an early age, she keeps her mouth shut and stares placidly ahead, sipping occasionally at the mead that Tara had placed in front of her at one point.

_“At least get drunk,”_ Tara had begged, _“I’ll worry and you get drunk.”_ Recalling these words, Eliza pushes the goblet’s rim between her lips and simply lets the mead lap against her lower lip, at least allowing herself the luxury of licking the alcohol away. The comment rings in her ears fondly and she chooses to fixate on her friend’s words, thinking (not for the first time) that if Tara were so inclined, she and Eliza would make a fine old married couple. Tara the worrier, Eliza the patient.

She allows herself a sigh, which draws the object of her thoughts to a stutter in her pacing. “What?” she asks, perhaps a little too sharply for the pensive silence of the tavern. Eliza flinches and several silent mages give Tara a dirty look.

“Sorry. I’m nervous, are you nervous?” she asks, hustling to Eliza’s table and collapsing into a chair. She peeks into Eliza’s goblet and tsks at her. “Told you to drink, you’re wasting my money.”

“Then drink it,” Eliza offers softly, leaning into the wall and running her thumbnail across her lower lip. Tara obliges and empties the vessel in three undignified gulps. She then runs a hand through her hair—massively curly and framing her face in a way that makes Eliza sigh—regarding Eliza with shrewd amber eyes.

“How’re you so calm?” she asks. Eliza stares straight ahead, reaching within to wrap a tendril of ice around her heart to calm its frantic beating.

“Years of meditation, my dear.”

“Don’t get you ice types.”

“I can’t afford to be so tempestuous and explosive,” Eliza says through a smirk, to which Tara rolls her eyes.

“You’re no fun, you know that?” at this Eliza finally disengages from her thousand-yard stare to give Tara her best affronted look, doing her best not to smile into her friend’s cheeky grin, pointedly ignoring the dimples in her cheeks. After a beat or two of fighting and losing, Eliza resumes staring straight ahead.

Tara starts spinning the goblet between her hands and Eliza finally answers her earlier question: “I am worried.”

Tara sniffs. “I know.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

A shrug, then: “I dunno. Had to fill the silence.”

_You fill the silence simply by entering a room, you walking thunderstorm,_ she thinks to herself, but simply huffs a laugh. “Sometimes silence is golden.” Tara, ever the open book, grimaces. “But I understand your discomfort.”

“It’s like we’re waiting for someone to _die.”_

Eliza gives her a sharp look and Tara, for her part, immediately looks as if she wishes the table could swallow her whole. “Maker, Frosty. I didn’t mean—”

The door opens and every set of eyes in the room swivels to watch whoever marches through it.

First the Seeker, tall and imposing with eyes of steel, then the Altus, looking paler than she’d remembered and favoring one side, and then the Warden, head down and brow furrowed with a distant gaze.

Daphne finally follows, shoulder-to-shoulder with Grand Enchanter Fiona, head bent towards the older woman and listening carefully to something Eliza can’t make out. The ice in her heart melts. She’s safe and whole, barring a small oozing wound above her eyebrow and a frazzled braid… and a rip in her jacket, a shallow gash in her leg, and bloody hilts peeking innocuously over her shoulder. Eliza cranes her neck and shifts her chair loud enough for it to squeak, and Daphne looks up, face impassive and eyes hollow.

She doesn’t smile like Eliza expects. Daphne merely blinks once, twice, turns her head to Fiona to say something that nobody can hear, and steps into the middle of the room.

She looks around, surveying the expectant faces surrounding her, her eyes sliding over Eliza’s table without making eye contact. There’s a subtle shift to her uninjured leg that Eliza hadn’t noticed before, and her hands are clenched into tight fists.

Without preamble, she speaks. “The Tevinter presence is dealt with.” Her voice carries, but there’s a thickness in it that Eliza hasn’t heard before. “Her Majesty Queen Anora has rescinded her offer of sanctuary to the southern mages, and—” she unfurls a fist into a quieting hand over the sudden din of nervous chatter, raising her voice— “and in light of these developments, the Inquisition has offered its protection and alliance in return for helping us seal the breach.”

Fiona steps forward and the resounding bout of whispers goes silent again. “I have accepted the Inquisition’s offer of alliance. Those who wish to remain under its protection will march with the Inquisition for Haven at dawn. If this situation sounds less than ideal, you will be allowed to leave, knowing you are no longer safe in Ferelden and the Inquisition bears no responsibility for anything that may come to pass.”

“What about after the breach?” someone asks. Eliza recognizes the speaker as a member of Starkhaven’s circle, but she can’t for the life of her remember his name.

Daphne turns to Cassandra, who shrugs a single shoulder. She, Eliza notices, is unscathed and seemingly irritated with the situation; understandably so, for a Seeker of Truth. Those standing closest to her look distinctly uncomfortable, as if their mana is being drained from their bodies simply by being near her.

Daphne huffs and turns from Cassandra to address the room at large. “That remains to be seen, as the Inquisition’s focus is closing the breach and finding those responsible. My best guess is that you will fall into various support roles.”

“What about templars?” comes a voice in the crowd. Eliza can practically _feel_ Daphne resisting the urge to roll her eyes, but she does an excellent job of maintaining the classic Trevelyan Face of Passivity.

“There is a small cadre of templars in the military camp, but they’ve already been briefed of the situation and are aware of their limits. Their presence is to protect _you_ as well as the people of Haven. It is, first and foremost, a village that has been very generous in turning over its production to support the Inquisition’s efforts, and we, the southern mages, _and_ the templars are guests.”

Behind her, Cassandra’s brows raise in a show of impressed surprise, a feeling that Eliza reflects in the small smile directed at her sister. Daphne doesn’t see it, and the same mage raises his voice.

“What are these limits you mentioned?”

She eyes him for a moment and Eliza recognizes him as a particularly vehement libertarian who has not been quiet about his hatred for templars. She gives Tara a look and she responds by mouthing _Kirkwall_ at her. Eliza nods once and turns her attention back to Daphne.

“They’re not allowed in the mage camp without reasonable cause—”

“And just what _is_ reasonable cause to them, us breathing the wrong way?” he interrupts, and Daphne shifts her weight into one hip and crosses her arms.

“Reasonable cause is a scream in the night or someone approaching with a _valid_ concern.” She turns to address the rest of the crowd. “This isn’t a Circle. We’re not shoving you from one cage into another. These are not the templars many of you have suffered at the hands of. These are good men and women who took their vows to _serve and protect_ to heart, and when they saw what the Chantry was regressing into, made the decision to join the Inquisition. I can assure you all, _you are safe with the Inquisition.”_

She allows the room to succumb to a dull roar of murmurs, eyes the loud Kirkwall mage, and returns to her companions. Eliza rises from her chair and makes her way over to her group.

“You’re more well-spoken than I remembered,” she says lightly, taking stock of the blood smeared across her sister’s jaw. She’d taken it for a shadow earlier. Daphne doesn’t return her smile and seems to look past her when they size each other up.

“Only when I have to be.” Her voice is much more tired than she’d allowed earlier. Eliza gives Dorian a questioning glance, but he shakes his head minutely.

“Are you alright?”

“A few scratches.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Eliza hums and reaches out to adjust Daphne’s braid, tucking a lock of hair back into its plait. Casually, she asks, “Any news from Therinfal?”

Daphne sighs, shakes her head. “I’ll know for sure when we get back to Haven.”

“How long is the march?”

“Provided they march more than they complain, only a few days.”

“We’re mages,” Dorian says drily. “All we _do_ is complain.”

Daphne snorts, but she offers no smile. Eliza frowns; she’s not supposed to be the quiet one, but it seems the life has been drained out of her by whatever happened in the castle. Dorian places a hand on her shoulder and she jumps.

“I’m going to check on Felix,” he says, and when she nods her head at him, he departs.

“The other Tevinter?” she asks, and Daphne shakes her head.

“He helped us.” Daphne sighs, bearing far more fatigue and pain than someone her age should. “We’re staying in camp. Make sure that whoever is coming with us goes to sleep early, because we march _at_ dawn.”

Eliza nods and gives one last smile as she finds Daphne’s hand and squeezes, sending a slow wave of comforting vibration into her sister’s body. Daphne’s brows draw together but she finally smiles back, the clouds in her eyes clearing briefly before she withdraws and leaves the tavern to the mages as they discuss the march with equal parts trepidation and excitement.

* * *

"An _alliance,_ Daphne?”

“Careful, Commander. Your _templar_ is showing.”

He scoffs and resumes pacing, feeling very much like a large animal trapped in a small cage. His skin is crawling. Despite his efforts over the last three years to atone for what he did and allowed to happen under his command in Kirkwall, the idea of so many mages roaming about unchecked twists something in his gut. He had followed Daphne into the war room after she debriefed them in the Chantry; in part because he missed her and she hasn’t stopped scowling since she got off her horse, and in part because he desperately needs to talk some sense into her.

He pauses in his frustrated stalking and takes a moment to observe her. Her palms are flat on the war table as she leans over a tactical map of Haven and the remains of the temple, but her eyes are closed and her head hangs low. He suddenly regrets shouting at her.

_Fussing,_ a voice in his head that sounds like hers corrects. He sighs.

“What was it like,” she begins quietly, “in Kirkwall?”

“I’ve already told you—”

“The _truth,_ Cullen.” He pauses. “Because there’s a group of mages out there who have referred to you as the Butcher of the Underground. Three of them _left._ ” She finally looks up at him. Her eyes are flat, dull. “What _happened_ in Kirkwall that was bad enough for three mages to decide risking their lives in the _wilderness_ was a safer bet than coming here?”

He swallows hard, tries to grasp a coherent thought as those seven years unbury themselves in his brain and assault him behind his eyelids. “The Knight-Commander—”

“No!” she shouts, pushing away from the table. “You don’t get to blame her. I read Varric’s book. I _gave_ you the benefit of the doubt. I recognize that Stannard was completely unhinged and you had barely recovered from whatever you faced during the Blight, but I promised these people protection, and—”

“And I have an _entire_ Inquisition to protect!” he shouts over her, slamming the table between them. She jumps and he immediately withdraws. “Did you not think for a second about the risk you invited into this place?”

“Can you stop treating them like wild animals for _once_ in your life?!” She pleads. “Do you think they woke up and _chose_ to pick up a staff? Do you think they want to be magical? To wake up in fear of their _fucking_ lives because of an accident of fate, to be ostracized and caged like an animal over something they had no choice over?”

“And you know what it’s like, then?”

Her mouth shuts with an audible clack of teeth and she looks down at her left hand, ungloved and pulsing with light. _Oh._

“I watched my sister get dragged away in the dead of night,” she says quietly into her hand. “I got to see her maybe once a year until she was Harrowed, and only then it became three times a year. Ostwick was a good circle. Eliza did as she was told and I know we have a name about as old as Arlathan, so I know we should consider ourselves so lucky. How many families were ripped apart because of the Chantry? How many instances of torture and Branding and abuse and horror have you been complicit in?”

“I’ve done my best,” he starts, “When Hawke disappeared and Stannard was dead, _I_ stayed and picked up the pieces, let the worst of the templars go off on their witch hunt – for three years I tried to change every part of my mind that screamed at me to go with them. To fill an empty circle. I _know_ what I did and I am _trying_ to be better. But the _risks—”_

“Are heavily outweighed by the alternative. You read the report, Cullen. You know what would have happened if I ignored Alexius and went to Therinfal.”

He sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose with a knuckle, and screws his eyes shut.

“Have you bothered apologizing?”

“I’m sorry?” he asks, rather reflexively, and she rolls her eyes.

“Not to _me,_ you dolt. The Kirkwall mages.”

“Do you honestly think they would have accepted one from me?” he asks incredulously, giving her a mad look. She shrugs and gives him an unimpressed look that seems to say, ‘no, but it would have been a decent place to start.’

“There are a few who stayed,” he says. “Most of the survivors used the confusion to go into hiding or begin planning revolts, but there are a few who stayed and aided in the relief. There were citizens who got caught in the crossfire, and the city’s government was in shambles.”

“Well, I hope the few who stayed and saw your effort to change, honest or not, are brave enough to stand up to the vocal few who’d rather set themselves on fire than pledge their service to us because _you’re_ the one in charge of the military,” she says acridly, folding her arms across her chest.

Simply put, and with no ounce of humor or irony, he’s wounded. It must show on his face, because her arms loosen just slightly and her scowl falls.

“That was harsh,” she says by way of an apology.

“I deserve worse,” he admits, and she sighs.

“I… I should go introduce the mages to the rest of the forces, and you need to be there, since you’re… in charge. Keep Lysette and the templars at a… ah. Non-intimidating distance and you just… stand there and look commanding.”

“Shouldn’t be hard,” he jokes lamely, but it elicits no reaction from her. “Daphne.”

Tears spring in her eyes and she shakes her head. “Not… no. No, you don’t…” she looks to the ceiling, sniffling. “I can’t. Not anymore.”

His chest deflates with a sharp exhale and he closes his eyes briefly, not trusting himself to look at her. “I understand,” he says hollowly, and he does, and he accepts it, but he’s still allowed to hate that she was finally smart enough to pull away, doesn’t he? He keeps his eyes trained in the lower distance but he feels her watching him, judging his calculated lack of reaction, maybe disappointed that he would just accept it instead of fighting her, insisting that he can do better, do anything to let him feel her in his arms just… just fucking _once._

“I’ll, um. See you outside.”

“Aye, Herald.”

He doesn’t see her bite her lip hard enough to draw blood or the deep breath she swallows to retain her composure, instead reliving the memory of their single morning together, the early light bright on her skin, the wine on her lips and his hands in her hair.

His instinct is to yell or punch something, but with the wind knocked out of his lungs and the ache creeping down his throat into his chest, all he can do is remember.

* * *

Fuck.

She abandons the Chantry quickly, ignoring Leliana and the _memory_ of Leliana in the future she’d prevented, ignoring Threnn’s cordial nod, ignoring Varric calling after her, and slides through her cabin door quietly.

She makes sure to lock it this time before burying her face into her pillow and screaming her throat raw. She does so with enough force that tears prick in her eyes and she lets them soak into the fabric, lets the frustrated scream turn into a sad little sob, lets herself nearly suffocate so maybe she won’t have to deal with this _shit_ anymore, and finally rolls off the bed onto the floor and stares unblinkingly up at the ceiling.

If she closes her eyes, she’s haunted with visions of the dark future she was tossed into. Sleep has not come easy.

She hasn’t told Eliza about what happens to her in this future, and as long as she doesn’t ask, she likely never will. Bile rises in her throat and she forces it down. Forces the memory down.

Eliza won’t become a red lyrium farm. Daphne has ensured that, at least.

That doesn’t mean that _she_ didn’t experience it, her distorted voice, her pleas to kill her and end her misery.

That doesn’t mean that she didn’t aim from the doorway, send a throwing blade through her sister’s throat and be dragged away, sobbing, by Dorian and Cassandra.

It just means it won’t happen _again._

She takes a shuddering breath and rolls onto her stomach, pushes to her knees, and stands, shuffling to a basin full of water and splashing her tears away. She glances at the faded mirror hanging in front of her; her eyes are still glassy and puffy and her cheeks are red, so at least everyone will know she’s been crying, which is exactly what she needs while she’s addressing a group of rebel mages and nervous soldiers.

Fucking perfect, she thinks to herself, walking to and slamming her door shut, because _Cullen_ will be out there, because she asked him to, and she just ended… whatever it was between them, and now she’s been crying and he’s smart enough to correctly guess it’s because she just ended _whatever_ between them.

Because she’s a fucking idiot.

She descends the stairs and walks past the village gates. Across from the military camp, several rows of tents are being erected for the mages, and Daphne nearly laughs at the extensive distance between the two camps. She nearly laughs, but Cullen chooses that moment to look at her, and his eyes are dark and his mouth is drawn, and she wants him to _react_ to something instead of just giving her that dark, faraway look.

She chews the inside of her cheek and turns away, marching toward the mages’ camp and motioning for Fiona to assemble her charges, waiting for orderly files to appear before her as she waits in the gulf between the two sets of tents.

Cullen joins her, Rylen at his side. Rylen, for his part, senses the tension between the two and smiles reassuringly at Daphne, and she manages a weak smile for his sake and looks up at Cullen.

A mistake.

He stares ahead, only allowing her to measure the line of his jaw, cursing her moral obligation to the mages when only two days ago she was daydreaming about licking it.

His jaw.

Among other things.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and his eyes flutter closed for a moment. She thinks she sees his lip shake.

“Don’t.” His voice is soft and a little broken, but there’s still steel behind it and she knows better than to press on, even though she wants to. She wants to take his hand and take it back and press into him and feel his chest on her back and his lips on her shoulder.

_Fucking shit._

Behind her, the Inquisition’s soldiers stand at attention in their inspection block. Before her, Fiona’s mages are arranged in a loose, wide arc, several people deep, children and apprentices in the front. She takes a deep breath and steps forward, opening her arms out in what she hopes is a welcoming gesture.

“Welcome to Haven,” she starts with a nervous laugh, the tone far different from the last time she addressed the crowd. A small wave of laughter weaves through the arc. “Behind me are the soldiers of the Inquisition. Some of them are former templars, but most of them are not, and those who are, recognize that they are no longer bound to the Order. You are here, united in cause—” she points at the breach with her marked hand, which pulse in time together, all eyes following her gesture— “to close that breach and aid us in bringing those responsible to justice.” She pauses, still unused to talking at great length, and steps to the side, backing slightly towards Cullen and Rylen. She throws out an arm. “This is Commander Cullen Rutherford, leader of the Inquisition’s forces, and beside him is Knight-Captain Rylen, his second in command.” They both acknowledge their introductions with slight bows of their heads.

She turns toward the soldiers, ready to address them in similar form, when a commotion from the arc of mages grabs her attention.

“What—?” she says, noticing barriers flying up across the crowd and feeling one settle around herself. Cullen’s hand is on his sword hilt and Rylen has a demurring hand held up to the soldiers. Daphne steps forward, ignoring Cullen’s warning behind her. Her sister, somewhere in the front and to the left, has her hand trained in Daphne’s direction and she knows she’s the one who threw the barrier on her. Her heart clenches, and then her breath is knocked out of her lungs when the crowd parts with a scream to reveal the mage from the tavern, the one with the pressing questions about templars and their limits.

He’s holding a knife in his hand, and as he steps through the parted crowd, eyes trained on Cullen, he raises the blade to his outstretched arm.

“I’d sooner die than fight for you!” he screams, and a blade is in her hand, her wrist is cocked, she’s watching him carefully, looking for an opening, but he doesn’t lunge—he slices his arm open, elbow to wrist, his eyes blackening and the air around him shifting into something sinister. Daphne’s arm is outstretched and the blade is in his throat before he has the chance to transform, or summon, or do whatever it is he had planned, quicker than even Cullen could unsheathe his sword. Another set of screams ripples through the crowd as the man slumps to the ground, blood gurgling out of his neck and his arm.

Her right hand has purchase on the dagger behind her shoulder and her left hand is in the air, palm down, as if she were calming a wild animal.

“Anyone else want to make a stupid mistake?” she calls out. A few older mages are shielding the apprentices away from the sight of the dead body, blood steaming on the snow and black eyes staring unseeingly at the sky, but nobody budges. She lets her right hand drop.

“I don’t need to remind you that even though this is an _alliance_ , illegal magic will not be tolerated,” she continues. “This isn’t a circle. I already promised you this. I won’t hesitate to take it back and turn it into a conscription _if_ you continue to be insubordinate or pose a clear and present threat to the people of Haven or the Inquisition. Do I make myself clear?”

An answering murmur of assent follows and she nods, sighing. Only her sister will meet her eyes.

“You’re dismissed.”

The crowd dissolves, some still lingering to get a look of the almost-blood mage, and Daphne moves in the soldiers’ direction.

“Are you _insane?_ ” Cullen seethes once she's in earshot, pointing at the body in the snow. She pinches her eyes shut.

“Spare me the lecture,” she says, expecting another tirade about the dangers of magic. Instead, he lurches forward and grabs her by the biceps, invading her space.

“He could have killed you!”

“I almost die every fucking day, Commander,” she reminds him, wriggling forcibly out of his grasp. Eliza joins them at her side, glaring in Cullen’s direction. “And from what I could tell, he was going after _you.”_

“You leapt in his path—”

“Did I not kill him? Did I miss something here?”

“Have you even ever encountered a blood mage?”

“I’m not going to give them another reason not to trust you!” she yells over him. He stops, his mouth still open to form his next argument, and it's almost amusing. “They can hate me all they want for killing one of their own, but the few people who don’t outright hate you, don’t need a reason to rally against you.”

Rylen excuses himself and begins issuing instructions to the block of very uncomfortable-looking soldiers. A few give them a wide berth as they move to dispose of the body.

Cullen’s cheeks burn and he turns his attention to Eliza, probably wondering who this mage is who thinks they can stand so close to the Herald.

“Eliza, Commander Rutherford. Commander, Eliza, my sister.”

“Oh,” he says simply, and Eliza doesn’t bother plastering on a polite face. Her expression mirrors Daphne, equally stormy but more distrustful.

“Are you alright?” Eliza asks after a moment of appraising him, and Daphne nods.

“Look. Obviously, you’re my connection to them. After that… after what happened, I need you to find out what they’re thinking.”

Eliza sighs, looking over Daphne’s shoulder into the mages’ camp. “By now they know we’re related, so they won’t say anything around me.” Daphne curses. “But I do have a friend who can snoop for you.”

“Perfect. Thank you, Liza.”

She squeezes Daphne’s shoulder with a comforting smile and walks away without so much as a glance in Cullen’s direction.

He watches her retreating back. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, and she snorts.

“Save it.”

She huffs a humorless laugh and brushes past him, leaving him to collect what little decorum he has left.

She knows she shouldn’t have gotten into a screaming match with the Commander of the Inquisition _in front of his troops_ , but she can’t change what happened. He started it anyway.

She also knows she shouldn’t go back to her cabin and cry about this entire mess until she falls into a nauseated slumber, but that’s exactly what she’s going to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per yooj (a phonetic spelling of that shortening of 'usual'--just let me live okay?) you can find me on tumblr [spouting a whole lot of nonsense](http://lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com).


	12. Some Favors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen finds himself reconnecting with someone from Kirkwall, Daphne tests out her stealth abilities, and Eliza is Not Pleased with certain revelations.

“You look terrible.”

It’s a voice he hadn’t heard in about a year, nor had he expected to hear... ever again, to be frank. He drags flat eyes up from the report in his hand to the owner of the voice, one Tara Soderquist, casually leaning against her staff with a hip cocked out. She blinks lazily at him, reminiscent of a cat, and grins.

Cullen sighs. “What are you doing here?” he asks, handing the report off to a passing page. She straightens and rolls her staff between her hands, rings clacking against polished wood.

“Well I’m a mage, aren’t I?” she asks, somewhat affronted. Cullen suppresses the urge to roll his eyes and she grins again. “Doin’ you a favor.”

He pauses. “How so?”

Tara shrugs, still rolling her staff between her palms. “Well most of the mages are afraid of you, but I’m not. Figured a Kirkwall mage being seen talking to the big bad ex-templar commander might settle some stomachs.”

Cullen frowns. “Trevelyan put you up to this.”

“Which one?” she asks sunnily, now lobbing her staff back and forth between her hands. Cullen is half mesmerized by the steady tempo.

“Does it matter?”

“Curious to see who you think it is.”

Cullen wants to stomp in the opposite direction, maybe find an alcoholic drink to dull the ache in his temples, but that’s unbecoming of a commander, especially one under such recent scrutiny. Besides, Tara is much less insufferable now than she was in Kirkwall, stuck on Cullen’s heels like a shadow in the days following the destruction of the Chantry, demanding he let her help.

“It could be either one of them,” he admits, and Tara laughs.

“Wasn’t either of their ideas. I’m smart sometimes, you know.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” he mutters, which earns him a shove.

“I _am_ snooping for the Herald, though.” His eyebrows lift and she continues, “yeah, nobody talks ‘round Frosty these days because they found out they’re sisters, so I’ve been going around spying and letting her know what everyone’s up to. Shenanigans, and the like.”

Cullen does his best to ignore the suspicious twist in his gut, ignores the voice in his head spitting fire about mages and shenanigans. “And what _are_ they up to?” he asks.

Tara hesitates for a moment, either to organize her information or fabricate a decent lie, but she eventually answers him. “The healers are pissing themselves at the lack of medicines here, so they’ve sweet-talked a few soldiers into escorting them into the hills so they can collect herbs.”

“Escort?”

She scoffs. “Something about bears. Too cold for bears here, I told them, but they don’t listen to me.”

Cullen smiles briefly, reminded of Tara’s intelligence and her knack for remembering _everything_ she hears. She was useful in the months during Kirkwall’s reconstruction. “Your father was a hunter, wasn’t he?”

“Hunter, tanner, fletcher, whatever.” She waves him off. “Still is, grumpy old coot. Anyway. The tranquil mages are helping Minaeve do research on the Fade and the breach. Some of them are helping Adan work on new potions, and one even talked to Harritt about enchanting some of his armor.” She taps her chin, looking skyward. “Oh! I also had an idea.”

“Which bodes ill for all, I suspect,” Cullen mutters. Tara makes a face.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” He makes a gesture with his hand motioning for her to continue. “Anyway. A fair few of the mages, myself included, are well-versed in offensive magic and we had the idea to form… a corps, of sorts.”

“A corps.”

“Yes. Battle magic.”

“Absolutely not.”

Tara whines. It’s almost endearing. “Bloody knew it. Look, you’re getting new soldiers every day that you have to start at square one with,” she says, gesturing to a block of recruits running drills with one of his lieutenants. “We’re already trained, harrowed, and _bored._ ”

“Oh, you’re bored?” he asks incredulously, huffing with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. “By all means, form a _battlemage corps_ to alleviate your _boredom._ ”

“Damn it Rutherford!” she exclaims, driving her staff into the ground. It crackles with static energy; he feels it in his toes and his heart lurches, but she merely crosses her arms and glares at him. “This would be a tremendous step to bridge the gap and give us a chance. We’re _tired_ of being the pariahs on the side. We’re _good_ and we want to help.”

Cullen sighs, digs the heel of his hand into his eye socket, and gives her an appraising look. Her skin is darker than he remembers, her eyes a striking shade of amber that glow from within. A new scar bisects one of her eyebrows and disappears, continuing outward toward her ear on her cheekbone. She must have gotten it fighting her way to Redcliffe, because the last time he saw her, she was a fresh-faced apprentice who demanded to be put through the harrowing so he would trust her.

The Circle had fallen. Stannard was dead, and most of her peers were either dead or disappearing, and she _still_ wanted to go through with it.

Cullen looks beyond her at the swirling vortex of green.

“After the breach,” he says finally. She raises a brow. “Da—the Herald will take a handful of the mages up to the ruins and attempt to close the breach, and that day is coming too soon to divide my attention with another project. If… when she succeeds and we’re given a chance to evaluate our next course of action, and the need _arises_ to form a corps of battlemages, _then_ I will consider your idea. _Carefully._ ”

Tara rocks back on her heels, considering this a success, and grins broadly. “I’d hug you if you weren’t so uptight and covered in a ton of silverite.”

“I’d very much prefer you _don’t_ hug me,” he says drily, but her smile doesn’t fade.

“You still look terrible,” she sings, unsticking her staff from the icy ground and collecting herself for departure.

“And you’re still a brat.”

Tara tosses a laugh over her shoulder as she trudges through the snow, hiking across the gulf separating the mage camp from the military. Cullen wonders if perhaps their sets of tents aren’t a bit too far apart.

* * *

Despite several days of practice and a set of freshly-dyed leathers, Daphne still feels woefully underprepared for this mission.

Varric and Sera had been helping her with her stealth skills, developing games of seeing how long she could go unnoticed or trying to steal things with increasing levels of difficulty. She was _almost_ able to unhook the grimoire from her sister’s belt without her noticing, but a clumsy hand had alerted Eliza to the attempted theft and left Daphne skittering in the snow.

Eliza, for her part, decided to help, but only after a long lecture about sneaking up on a mage and how stupid it is to try to steal someone’s grimoire… off their body.

(The next day, Daphne had managed to lift one off a snoozing Dorian. He’d found it in the tavern a few hours later.)

The plan: under a black moon and cover of snowfall, clad in black leather and the softest, lightest boots she owns, sneak into the military camp. Avoid the patrolling guards, stick to the shadows as they march past with torches in their outstretched hands. Find the commander’s tent and weasel her way in. Find his vambraces, the ones issued to him by the Chantry, emblazoned with the sword of Visus, and _steal them._

More than an exercise in theft and stealth, it’s a favor. She doesn’t have the replacements just yet, as they’d be too noisy to carry with her, but after some hefty bartering with Threnn and a few favors for Harritt, Daphne’s requisitioned a set of Inquisition vambraces for him. Her goal is to leave them somewhere easy for him to find just as she’s leaving for the Fallow Mire, partly because the mystery built into the plan is fun, and partly because she doesn’t want to stick around for a lecture about respecting people’s property and stealing from leadership.

So here she finds herself, stuck to the back of Cullen’s tent, watching the flickering torchlight fade away enough so that she can creep around the front and unfasten the bottommost ties on his tent flaps. She drops to her knees and pokes her head through, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness once more, eyeing his cot and looking for the outline of a sleeping man, listening for breaths or mutterings or “what the fuck are you doing in my tent.”

There’s nobody there.

Perplexed and a little disappointed, Daphne—eyes now adjusted to darkness—checks the corners of the tent, the desk she knows is across from his cot, the chest under the desk where a normal person would tuck a chair—nothing.

No Cullen means no armor means no vambraces to steal.

She shimmies into the tent and plops onto the ground, dusting snow off her thighs and knees, grateful for hard-packed earth inside the tent. It’s only several degrees warmer in here than outside, but she doesn’t give herself time to acclimate. If Cullen isn’t here, that means he could come back, and the last thing she needs is to get caught sitting in the middle of his tent staring forlornly at his empty cot.

 _“It’s not what it looks like,”_ she’d say pathetically, as he would (very likely) stand above her with a scowl and crossed arms, glaring down at her. The image is ruined by the short height of the tent itself and the fact that Cullen would probably be hunched over her, more annoyed and surprised than furious.

She pokes her hands through the tent flap, fluffs the snow to cover the Daphne-sized dent she’d left, and refastens the ties before crawling to the back of the tent. There’s a spot in the center of the back panel that isn’t staked down, and an experimental tug reveals that it’s just slack enough to allow her to wiggle through. She gazes around the space one last time before crawling through, inching her way into a snow drift.

The snow is falling steadily and she can’t just sit here, her back against a tent, and let snowflakes collect on her black leathers. She extracts herself from the snowdrift and kicks powder into the spot she’d just vacated, wondering briefly if Cullen might be in the Chantry, either praying or taking advantage of the ancient building’s relative warmth to catch up on work. He can’t be in the tavern, because she and Varric were the last ones in there before Flissa emptied them out into the cold, and he wouldn’t be in any of the houses in the village.

She waits for a guard to turn their back before sprinting across the snow toward the village gate, but something stops her before she can climb the tree to scale the fence; a feeling, visceral and loud, not unlike the rippling static that rolls up her arm from the mark when she’s near a rift.

She’s since learned that it’s her instinct, louder and bolder in these last few months than it had been in Ostwick, a product of listening to it more often. _Check the cabin._

Her eyes rise from the snow covering her boots to the direction of Taigen’s abandoned cabin, the place she goes when she’s overwhelmed, or scared, or simply needs to scream into the void, the place Cullen trained her, where they’d sat on the floor in front of the fire, sweaty and heaving and sore and she’d asked him about his family, his past as a Templar, where she’d carefully deflect any of his own questions with jokes or shallow answers. _Go._

So she goes, sticking to the shadows, breaking into the trees once she’s past the point that guards patrol. Taigen’s old cabin looms into view and there’s light flickering under the door. She approaches silently, presses her ear to the seam in the door, and listens.

Nothing.

She tries the door and it’s locked, but she’s nothing if not over-prepared, so she takes a knee, slips a lockpick out of her cuff, and listens to the tumblers fall into place. The door shifts open with the slightest _ssnck_ and she holds her breath, counts to ten, and toes the door open just wide enough to creep inside. The fire grate that used to be pushed to the side for her training sessions is in its original space in the middle of the room, glowing dimly and casting long shadows on the wall. Daphne closes her eyes and listens.

Sure enough, from the other side of the wall, deep, slow breaths find her ears and she nearly sighs in relief, stepping just as Sera taught her—light on the balls of her feet, heels balanced an inch off the ground, calves and heel muscles straining under the pressure of the gait combined with her careful crouch. Her head swivels around the corner and her mouth goes dry at the sight that greets her.

She’s found Cullen all right, bare-chested with an arm thrown over his eyes, the other fallen off the cot that’s too small for his frame, threadbare blanket barely covering the long, muscled expanse of his legs. A long, socked foot twitches and she withdraws to the other side of the wall, holding her breath and listening for sounds of stirring. He mumbles something, shifts in the cot, and resumes deep, even breathing. She peeks around the corner again.

He’s on his side now, cheek pillowed atop his forearm, elbow pressed into the wall at the head of the cot, the other arm curled into his chest, fist gripped in the blanket. She allows herself to breathe again.

She knows he’s not naked. She can _see_ his breeches underneath the blanket, but it doesn’t take much to imagine that he _could be_ naked under there, and a perverse part of her wonders what she might find before she remembers that she’s angry at him, that he needs to prove himself before she can conscionably see herself pursuing any kind of romantic endeavors with him… should he maintain his own inclinations. _He shouldn’t do it for me,_ she scolds herself, _he needs to do it for the Inquisition. And himself._

But his _arms._

She wants to run out of the cabin and throw herself into the snow.

She wants to crawl on top of him and lick the cord of muscle in his neck.

She _needs_ to find those bloody vambraces and get the fuck out of there before he wakes up.

Cullen is sleeping, half naked, which means that his armor is somewhere in this cabin. She scans the floor and finds his clothes in neat piles against the desk on which she’d found Taigen’s notes, in order of how he dresses—ever the military man.

She steps forward, freezing when she puts too much weight on one foot and her toe pops. It sounds enough like wood settling in the grate, and maybe Cullen’s ever-vigilant mind arrives at the same subconscious conclusion, because he doesn’t stir again. Luckily, the vambraces are on top of the desk, side-by-side and unburdened by anything above or beneath it. She thanks the Maker that at least this part should be easy enough. She wraps her fingers around the scarred metal and slowly lifts her hand, tucking the buckles against herself as her other hand reaches for the other vambrace. A buckle drags against the desk and she freezes again, hand in midair, head cocked minutely to listen for signs of Cullen waking. He mumbles and she turns her head, but he only shifts slightly and settles into the cot. She snatches the other vambrace and tucks it into the crook of her arm and turns, avoiding the floorboard she knows will creak with the slightest pressure.

Daphne allows herself one more glance at Cullen’s sleeping form, feeling only a little guilty for watching him like this in such a vulnerable state. When is he ever vulnerable? When would he ever allow himself to drop his guard around her, anyway? This is probably the only chance she’ll get, and so, with two very noisy pieces of equipment squirreled safely in her arms, she studies his face. His hair is mussed in his sleep, his natural curls escaping the hold of whatever pomade he uses, and in sleep the ever-present frown has slipped from his face, forehead smooth and free of burden, and Daphne is struck by how _young_ he looks and it hurts. Her bones ache just from looking at him and she chokes on a sad sigh, turns away and creeps toward the door, wondering if maybe she shouldn’t steal these stupid vambraces after all, but _ugh you crawled through the snow for this, don’t let it be in vain._

She feeds an arm through the crack in the door and flings a vambrace into the snow where it lands with a dull poof, then grabs the other one and does the same, freeing her hands so she can slip outside and close the door as silently as possible. Amusingly, her blind tosses have strewn the vambraces yards away from each other, and she bends to collect them as she passes, no longer concerned with stealth as the snow softens her footsteps. She buckles the vambraces on her own forearms, loose and clumsy as they are, to free her hands so she can scale the village wall with ease, a feat made easy after years of climbing trees in her youth.

Eliza is waiting in her room when she arrives, dozing on her bed. She awakens with a sharp sniff and an upward jolt, relaxing upon sighting her younger sister closing the door softly behind her, clad in black and smelling damp.

“Did you get them?” she asks softly, and Daphne holds her forearms aloft, hands curled in triumphant fists. Eliza smiles her approval. “Will you get rid of them?”

Daphne doesn’t even need to unbuckle them, so she merely slides them off her slimmer forearms. “I’m not sure. I think I’ll keep them and give them back after he’s started wearing the new ones.” She hides them under stacks of clothes in her chest.

“When will that be?”

Daphne shrugs, peeling her coat off and letting it land at her feet with a wet splat. Both women wince at the sound and Daphne continues shucking off freezing layers of clothes, shivering all the way. The white shift underneath is at least dry, and so she wriggles out of her sodden breeches, fishes a dry pair of smalls and socks out of her chest, and turns to her sister.

“I’ll take these to laundry for you,” Eliza offers, bending to collect Daphne’s clothes.

“Thank you,” Daphne replies, pulling her socks on. “Mmm, you warmed my bed for me.”

Eliza chuckles from the door. “That was the plan.” A pause, then: “Goodnight, Daffodil.”

Daphne’s already halfway in bed and half-asleep when she replies with a bleary “g’night, Lizzy.”

* * *

_Dearest Elizabeth,_

_You cannot imagine the depth of my relief when I received your letter. Not a day passes when you don’t cross my mind. Often I find myself in the gardens, talking to the snowdrops you planted before you left, as if the tiny blooms could offer me such council that I would so often find in you._

_I have no doubt the Maker guides your steps, dear Snowdrop. And to hear that you’re at your sister’s side! It soothes an old man’s soul to know my flowers are together once more. Guide her, my love. She has a gentle heart and I fear in her journey she might lose herself._

_Of course when this is all over, you’re welcome to a glass of eiswein in the study. I’ve no doubt you will have much to tell me of your adventures._

_Your loving Father,  
M. Trevelyan III_

Eliza smiles into the parchment in her hands, tracing the curls of her father’s signature with her eyes until a grunt from her sister interrupts her thoughts. She looks up from Daphne’s desk to find the woman in question ensnared within a corset, arms akimbo as she tries to wiggle it around the breadth of her shoulders. Gentle heart, indeed.

“I could help, you know,” she mentions, folding the letter and stowing it within a pouch on her hip. Daphne huffs, face hidden.

“This is how I usually do it,” she says, finally freeing herself and sliding the corset into place, face red and hair wild. “Couldn’t ask for a handmaid, could I? That’d be prissy.”

Eliza snorts. “I’m sure Lady Montilyet could have obliged.” Daphne shrugs in response and bends forward to reach the ties behind her. A shoulder pops in protest. “Really, Daph. Let me help.”

Daphne straightens and throws her hands up in supplication as Eliza rises, turning her sister and re-lacing the corset. “How tight?”

“Enough to keep things in place,” she answers, throwing her hair over her shoulder and working it into a loose braid. “I love not having Mother around to snipe and tighten my stays when my waist isn’t tiny enough. Like Claire!” Daphne giggles.

“Please, you could fit Claire through an embroidery hoop.” Eliza knots the cord and tucks it into her corset. “How’s it feel?”

“Like it’s supposed to, remarkably,” Daphne jokes, taking a hyperbolically large breath. “Suppose you want to be my handmaid?”

“Not likely.” Eliza returns to the desk chair as Daphne reaches within her chemise to adjust herself when the cabin door flies open, startling her into casting a barrier upon herself and her sister. Daphne, for her part, while spooked, still has a hand inside her clothes as she watches the newcomer stride into the room.

 _Him,_ the nasty little voice in her head sneers, and Eliza’s jaw sets as she locks eyes with the commander of the Inquisition. She suddenly remembers that Daphne has yet to put any pants on.

“Daphne!” she hisses, gesturing to her state of undress and then the _very angry man_ in the room.

As it seems, Cullen notices the same, as his cheeks blaze and his eyes find the ceiling.

“Good morning,” Daphne greets breezily, adjusting the strap of her chemise to stay on her shoulder. Cullen looks livid. He must have found his vambraces missing.

“Where are they.”

Daphne looks down at her bare legs, completely unconcerned with her state of undress. “Next in line to be put on, but you’re a bit impatient.” His eyes snap to her face, clearly unamused. She sits upon her bed, stuffing her feet into her pants and standing to wiggle them over her hips. She and Cullen maintain eye contact the entire time, though he seems remarkably less calm than she does. Eliza folds her arms over her chest and regards her sister with suspicion.

“My vambraces,” he all but growls, looking for all the world like he wants to shake Daphne until they fall off her body somehow. She busies herself with her blouse and peeks at his arms.

“Aren’t you wearing them?”

He closes his eyes. She wonders if he counts to ten to find his patience, the same method that Eliza had been taught. “I am in no mood to play this game, Trevelyan.”

Daphne clicks her tongue. “No games, Commander.” She rolls her sleeves to the elbows and approaches him and Eliza watches on as Cullen allows her to extract an arm from the tight fold across his chest and inspect the vambraces he’s wearing. From what she can see, they’re standard issue Inquisition bracers, not the ones Daphne had Harritt make. They must not be ready. “These look new.”

It takes everything in Eliza’s power not to burst out laughing. Maybe her mouth twitches as she swallows the laugh, but she goes unnoticed as Cullen glares daggers into Daphne’s head. She drops his arm.

“Because I woke up this morning and _mine_ had vanished.”

“I’d blame fairies,” Daphne says easily. “New moon last night. Leave a bowl of milk and honey and a coin or two, it’ll keep them occupied.”

“Daph.” Eliza’s warning is less effective with the undercurrent of laughter, but Cullen snaps his head to her, as if surprised she’s in the room.

“Enchanter,” he greets with a shallow bow, “Forgive me. I hadn’t—”

She shrugs him off. “We’re used to being ignored,” she says primly, ignoring Daphne’s loaded glance in her direction. She’ll play nice when he does.

“Why are you blaming me for your vambraces going missing?” Daphne says quickly, hoping to avoid a fight. Cullen huffs.

“Who else could take them?”

“Sera, for one,” Daphne says, and Cullen falters momentarily. “I’m betting it _was_ Sera, actually,” and while Eliza is surprised with Daphne’s ease in lying and placing the blame upon a friend, Sera had previously voiced her approval if the need arose. “Besides,” Daphne continues, picking through the ends of her hair, “they’re just vambraces, aren’t they?”

Cullen takes a breath as if he’s about to argue, but he’s evidently smart enough to see the end of each argument resulting in something similar to the fight they’d had about allowing mages into the Inquisition. Daphne drops the tail of her braid and her eyes soften, something Eliza does not expect and does not know how to process.

“They’ll turn up,” she says softly, and Cullen seems to deflate. The tension surrounding them has shifted from irritable to something deep and forlorn, and if Eliza weren’t watching so closely she’d have missed Cullen’s subtle lean or the twitch in her sister’s hand, as if she wants to reach for him but decides against it at the last second. Cullen turns away and Daphne looks at her feet, bare and awaiting socks. Her toes flex. Whatever moment the pair has shared is passed, and Eliza feels very much like she shouldn’t have witnessed it.

Cullen’s hand is on the door and Daphne mumbles after him, “Shall we call a war meeting? ‘The Commander’s vambraces are missing, round up the spies.’”

Cullen snorts and opens the door, tossing a dry, “I’ll assemble the scouts” over his shoulder. Daphne’s shoulders fall when the door clicks shut and a small sigh escapes her mouth, her back to Eliza. The mage shifts in her chair to make her presence known again, giving Daphne an unimpressed brow raise when she turns to address her.

“Don’t,” she mutters, plopping onto the bed and snatching a pair of socks off the covers. Eliza tries to gather her thoughts as she watches the younger woman roll the socks over her breeches to the knee.

“How long?” she asks softly. Daphne picks up a boot and shoves her foot into it with force, not saying anything. “Daphne.”

“Nothing happened,” she replies into her knee. She knots the laces and blinks rapidly before reaching for the other boot.

“That’s not what I asked,” Eliza presses, willing away the sharp, icy anger.

Daphne rises so abruptly that Eliza thinks she might lunge for her, but she only reaches for her belt and slings it around her hips, shoving a dagger into its scabbard and tugging on a pair of riding gloves. There are tears in her eyes.

“Then don’t ask.”

Eliza stands as Daphne makes for the door, yanking her leather coat off a peg as she walks. Eliza follows her into the hazy grey morning. “Daphn—”

“I’m going for a ride,” she says sharply, pulling her coat on as she makes for the stables. Eliza follows her out of the village gate and finally gives up as Daphne nods a curt greeting to Dennet and takes the reins of a saddled horse from a groom, mounts it effortlessly, and drives her heels into its flank with a sharp whistle. The horse flicks its head and takes off, Daphne folded close to its body, hands wrapped in the reins. She steers the beast through the gulf between the military and mage camps before bearing left around the frozen lake.

Eliza sighs and watches her disappear down the path, crossing her arms. From the military camp, she finds Cullen also watching her retreating back and when he turns his attention elsewhere, their eyes meet. Her jaw clenches and her father’s voice rings in her head:

_Guide her. She has a gentle heart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always I'm usually hanging out on
> 
> [this hellsite called tumblr](http://lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com)
> 
> .


	13. Worthy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The breach is closed. Nobody is prepared for after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _In time an avalanche_   
>  _Will cave in on mines_   
>  _Covering all evidence_   
>  _The very last time_   
>  _The very last time_   
>  _The very last time_   
>  _The very last time_   
>  _The very last time_   
>  [Sohn - The Wheel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaBspvzGqKU)

To an outside observer, it would look like the Herald of Andraste might be praying to the breach, with her palm held aloft to the swirling green vortex in the sky and her face angled upwards in what looks like supplication. But her lips do not move and her eyes do not blink, and she is _not,_ in fact, praying.

She is watching.

The mark on her palm swirls and pulses in time with the breach, and if she closes her eyes and concentrates, she can only _just_ feel the subtle vibrations of the Fade etched in her bones. She _needs_ to concentrate; at first it was deafening, a ringing in her ear and a constant tingling along her skin, but as she’s sealed the nearest rifts and gotten accustomed to the constant thrum of the mark, her body has grown tolerant of the once-foreign sensation. It is a part of her, and she wonders how much of her will go with the breach once she closes it.

Solas joins her and breaks her concentration. “It’s nearly time,” he intones gently, his musical voice a balm on her frayed nerves. She nods, retracting her arm from the sky. He watches with mild interest, and Daphne feels as if she’s a specimen to be studied rather than a friend or ally. She’s always felt that way with Solas.

“Are you ready?” he asks, more to her hand than herself. She raises a brow, but nods, chasing the quizzical look off her face before his wintry eyes find hers.

“I’m… nervous,” she admits, and Solas chuckles. For once, it’s not the patronizing laugh she’s used to, and she finds herself smiling along with him.

“A testament to your character,” he promises. “Why are you nervous?”

She pauses, chewing the inside of her cheek and debating whether she should confide in him. It’s true that he’s been nothing but helpful, and he _did_ save her life following the explosion at the Conclave, but despite all the questions she’s asked and the effort she’s expended to get to know him, he’s kept her at a distance. She _wants_ to be his friend, but he’s exhausting.

Still, her anxiety is eating away at the space behind her eyes, so she swallows a quick breath and tells him. “You said before that you’re not sure if the mark will disappear once the breach is closed,” she edges, and his brows furrow so slightly that a less observant person wouldn’t have noticed.

“I have said that,” he confirms, frowning. “And I have no new evidence to support a contrary hypothesis.”

She sighs. “It’s just…” she stutters for a moment, closes her eyes and holds her hand aloft again, feels the energy buried between muscle and bone, thrumming quietly. “I can _feel_ it. It feels like… like every part of me has been asleep and suddenly the blood is rushing back and making every inch tingle.”

She opens her eyes to find Solas staring at her intently, a drop of sorrow tinting his eyes. “You’re afraid that it _will_ take the mark,” he murmurs, daring to place a hand on her shoulder. She leans into it slightly, thankful for his grounding touch.

“I’m more afraid of how much of me it might take.”

Solas hums, keeps his hand on her shoulder but looks behind them at the breach. “I will not lie to you,” he says, turning back to her, “You have earned my respect, and thus my honesty. It is possible your fears could come to fruition.”

Daphne nods. A voice to validate her fears is somehow more calming than terrifying at this point. She concentrates on his cool baritone and the length of his fingers pressing warmth into her collar bone over the rush of blood in her ears.

“However, if any harm should come to you, I’ll do everything in my power to preserve your life.” He pauses, tries his signature half-smirk. “After all, it would not be the first time doing so.”

“You know, Solas,” Daphne says, willing the shake from her voice, “I’m almost positive that’s something a _friend_ would say.”

Solas withdraws his hand and humphs in consideration. “Such an honor is bestowed only upon those Heralds who live up to their names and close the breach.”

“I’m afraid you have few you can call friends,” she says gravely.

Solas matches her expression in jest. “It’s a lonely path I walk, my lady.”

Daphne bursts into a small peal of laughter and marches toward the assembling mages, Solas at her side. “Some way or another, I’m going to buy your love.”

* * *

Though he had no doubt that the Herald would close the Breach with little incident, Cullen still felt a massive weight slide off his shoulders when she, her party, and her small army of mages returned from the Temple ruins. The sky is quieter now, with only a faint greenish glow seeping into surrounding clouds. He wonders how long the sky will bear its scar.

He’s joined near the village gates by Trevelyan herself, with bleary eyes and her arms wrapped around herself.

“I thought you’d be sleeping,” he remarks as she comes to stand beside him, and she shrugs.

“Can’t,” she says simply, staring down at her hand. Like the sky, it no longer glows and pulses, but there is a scar across her palm, as if she’d once caught the sharp side of a blade with a bare hand.

“Does it still hurt?” he asks, and she shakes her head, frowning.

“No, it hasn’t really _hurt_ since after the Conclave.” She pauses, meets his eyes, and continues: “but something isn’t right.”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“It was too easy. I just… throw my hand at the breach and suddenly it’s gone? We can breathe again? World’s not ending?”

Cullen is inclined to agree, but it’s his job as a leader of the Inquisition to put on a brave face. “For now,” he says. “There’s still the matter of what you saw in the dark future.”

Daphne grimaces and is about to turn to walk away, presumably to find someone else to talk to and leave him to his devices, when a sharp noise of alarm sounds from above him. Daphne freezes and follows the sound with her eyes, blinking when a guard appears over the edge of one of the platforms just inside the gate – a watchtower, of sorts – with an urgent expression. Daphne scales the ladder join him as Cullen hears the guard report ‘an advancing force of alarming size.’

He steps outside the gates and squints into the horizon, dread blooming in his chest. A sea of torchlight snakes across the mountainside, almost upon the frozen lake, moving quickly under cover of darkness. He calls up to the tower guard, “Eirlan! Report!”

Lavellan peers over the railing, his eyes betraying the steady tenor of his voice. “I can’t count them, Commander. Looks like infantry.” The hand on the pommel of Cullen’s sword tightens.

“Under what banners do they march?” he asks, staring in the direction of the threat.

The guard pauses to scan the area with his telescope. “No banners, Commander,” comes the reply. Cullen curses under his breath.

“How much time do we have?”

“Not long. They’re moving fast.” A hand flies up to massage a temple and he runs through options. Their number is few and Haven is hardly defensible. This is going to be ugly.

“Prepare your archers.” Lavellan salutes and returns his attention to the darkened horizon and Cullen returns within the gate, where Daphne is pacing, her sister is watching, and Cassandra and Josephine converse quietly. Cullen orders the gate shut. Cassandra is the first to address him.

 “Cullen?”

He sighs. “It’s a massive force, the bulk over the mountain.” Daphne moves towards the gate and Josephine pales.

“Eirlan said no banner,” Daphne murmurs, her voice distant. They meet eyes. _It was too easy._ Josephine asks something of Cassandra but Cullen doesn’t pay attention, instead watching Daphne as she cautiously approaches the gate. She has a dagger in her hand, tucked against her forearm.

A frantic voice on the other side: “I can’t come in unless you open!” He instantly thinks it to be a trap, but Daphne hardly hesitates before she tucks the thin blade into her sleeve and rushes forward. The gate pushes open and Cullen’s sword is half-drawn when an approaching unknown knight falls to his knees, and then into the snow. A slight blond man – boy – stands behind him, a knife in one hand and his eyes covered by the wide brim of a hat. He looks like a scarecrow, and his energy is deeply unsettling. Daphne approaches silently with narrow eyes, her wrist cocked and hidden behind her hip. Eliza’s fingers are twitching with an uncast barrier and they share a nod, an agreement of camaraderie on this night of unknowns.

The boy takes a defensive stance. “I’m Cole. I came to help… to warn you.” Cullen shifts his sword grip, a nervous habit from his youth when he was unsure of how to read an opponent. The boy uses a weapon, but his aura is reminiscent of those he’d encountered within the Circles. A strange vibration, but no thrum of lyrium… “People are coming to hurt you… you probably already know tha–”

“What is this? What’s going on?” Daphne asks, her tone urgent but not aggressive.

“The Templars come to kill you.” He hears Eliza suck in a sharp breath beside him.

“Templars?” she asks in disbelief.

“Is this the Order’s response to our talks with the mages, attacking blindly?” he addresses this to Daphne, whose eyes flash defensively. She opens her mouth, but Cole speaks first.

“The Red Templars went to the Elder One,” he says to Cullen, and turns to Daphne. “You know him? He knows you… You took his mages.” With a somewhat dramatic flourish, he points to a spot in the trees. “There.” There are too many questions: who is this boy, who are these _red_ Templars, what do they have to do with the Elder One, and the one screaming louder than the rest: _what do I do here?_

His mind goes silent when he follows Cole’s finger to find the shadow of an impossibly tall, corrupted humanoid stands on an outcropping of rock, his gaze trained directly on Daphne. The figure of another armored man stands with him and the clouds part enough to cut the shadow and his mouth goes dry.

Samson.

He swallows back the bitter blend of despair and rage and turns to look at Daphne. She’s staring in the same direction, the color drained from her face, her lips pressed in a thin line. Her eyes betray her silence, scanning the distance wildly.

“This Elder One…” Cullen murmurs.

“He’s _very_ angry that you took his mages,” Cole, somewhat sadly.

Daphne wheels on him, eyes wild. “Cullen! _Please_ tell me you have a plan.” The desperation in her voice sets a tremor in his hands.

A plan?

He wants to laugh.

This place would be buried in less than a second, all of them with it. The Chantry cells could hold a few them until they cut the doors down, but who would he be to judge who gets the safety of the church? And how could he possibly organize a retreat quickly enough to save everyone as well as ensure they wouldn’t be followed?

His eyes find the trebuchets and Daphne follows his gaze, squares her shoulders and reads the plan in his eyes as it formulates. She wordlessly gestures to her inner circle to gather around her and await instruction.

“Haven is hardly defensible. We need to take control—immediately—if we are to survive this.” He pauses, curses his inexperience and wishes Kirkwall could have somehow prepared him for this. “Use the trebuchets. Infiltrate, if you must.” She reaches over her shoulders, pulling out her twin daggers. Cullen in turn unsheathes his sword, addressing the mages who have congregated with his soldiers in the open space before the village walls.

“Mages! You have sanction to engage them!” He stalks forward, aiming his voice above the crowd. “That is Samson, he will not make it easy. If you can fight, do so. Hold nothing back. If you cannot, gather as many supplies and civilians as you can find and get to the Chantry.” Tara, whom he finds in the front line among the group, nods solemnly and rolls her staff between her hands, a nervous habit. She wanted a battlemage corps, he thinks to himself, here she can prove herself.

He takes a deep breath: “Inquisition! With the Herald! For your lives, for all of us!” The air fills with cries of valor and the ringing of swords being unsheathed. He drops his right arm and moves toward Daphne, who is pointing with the pommel of her dagger, directing her party.

“Sera, Varric, I need you picking them off from the trees. Dorian and Vivienne, find choke points and start casting mines. Choke them out before they can gain on us. Bull. I need you to do crowd control.” She pauses, taking inventory. “Cassandra, stay with me. Blackwall, you’re on Solas.” She takes a deep breath and meets Cullen’s eyes for a split second. “Solas. This is going to be an ugly fight. You cast the best barriers and have the best eyes. Keep us alive. Freeze them where you can.” She glances around the circle of people she’s collected and she and Eliza share a silent exchange. “Liza, front lines with the soldiers. Keep barriers on them and try to get Samson.”

Eliza pauses, bites the inside of her cheek, and nods. “Yes, Herald.” Before she leaves, Daphne reaches for her hand and they share a more poignant moment. Eliza squeezes her hand once and lets go, leaving Cullen with a challenging glance.

_If you let anything happen to her I will kill you myself_

He nods once, accepting her demand, and turns his attention back to Daphne.  

“Get to the trebuchets. Burying them is our best chance,” he says. Her eyes flicker briefly and her steady façade drops, and she is suddenly a child in a coat too big for her shoulders, seeing something not meant for her eyes. In that moment, he’s selfish enough to entertain the idea of throwing her over his shoulder and spiriting her down to the cells beneath the chantry to let the world end around themselves and let his last breath be the scent of her coating his lungs, but she rolls her wrists out and her daggers flash in the firelight, and he breaks his daze to find her staring curiously at him. Her guard is back up and she offers a grim smile.

“Don’t die out there. I’d hate to have to find a new commander.”

“Is… is that an order?” he asks.

“A request.”

“I’ll consider it.” The briefest of smirks and he turns on his heel, falling into the old and familiar flow of battle.

He’s fought alongside mages only once in his life, and it was the battle in Kirkwall alongside Hawke’s companions against his Knight Commander. A flicker of a memory of a red lyrium statue passes by and he shakes himself out of it, only to be slammed back into that space when he confronts his first Red Templar. His armor is a corruption of the very same which Cullen had worn for a third of his life, the flaming sword on his chest a bitter contradiction. Through the Templar’s visor he can see glowing red eyes, but even more disturbing is the fact that spikes of red lyrium are growing out of his pauldrons and vambraces. The song calls to him but it’s wrong – off key, discordant, feral.

Cullen finds himself at an advantage; though they’re a gross bastardization of the Templar Order, they still fight the same, and so he knows their weaknesses. As he cuts through the front lines and shouts encouragement to his soldiers, he easily deflects his opponents’ frenzied, half-cocked attacks. The red lyrium has them moving with little control, their main strength being speed. He plucks a round shield covered in blood from the snow and charges an archer aiming at an otherwise occupied mage, dispatching him with an upward thrust. He withdraws his blade with a wet _schick_ and spins behind him, finding himself flanked by two more Templars. A circle of blue forms under his feet and he rolls to the side, leaving the circle as the mine primes and explodes, freezing the two Templars solid. He shatters the frozen head of one with the hilt of his sword, bashing the left with his shield. He sees a long blonde braid disappear into another throng of enemies.

With a snap and a whistle, the first trebuchet launches. He withdraws and looks over, spying Daphne and her party sprinting south. It’s not even manned. His stomach drops and he runs to provide relief. As he passes the stables, he notices that they’re empty, thanking the Maker that Dennet had the forethought to release them at the first tolling of the bell. Hopefully he, the horses, and some of the civilians have gotten up the mountain path – Leliana is sure to have seen to evacuations.

Half of Haven is in flames. He arrives in time to block an ill-aimed fireball, glaring in Dorian’s direction.

“Sorry!” he calls. Vivienne mutters something to him and he cackles, driving his staff into the ground with a flourish. A circle of fire erupts under the feet of an archer Cassandra had engaged. He falls to her side and they meet eyes with a nod.

Daphne skirts past him, her braid whipping around her shoulders, and she sneaks behind the pair of warriors. “Cover me.” Her eyes dart past their shoulders and she inclines her head toward an approaching behemoth before backing towards the trebuchet. Cassandra moves to flank the abomination as Cullen engages.

It’s dispatched in short order and Cullen scans the field again. Daphne’s been forced to abandon the trebuchet and is nowhere to be seen, but Sera has snuck forward, her bowstring slung over one shoulder. Cullen is about to call for the Herald when an arrow ricochets off his chestplate. He turns in the direction it came from and watches, fixated, as Daphne throws herself on the archer’s back, slitting his throat in one clean draw and rolling away, hooking her foot around another archer’s knees and sending him crashing to the ground. He hooks her knee with his bow and brings her down with a grunt, but with a twisting kick Cullen isn’t sure is physically possible, she frees herself and punches him square in the face, driving a knife into the side of his neck and springing to her feet. Her eyes are wild and her lips are curled into a feral snarl, she’s covered in blood, and her hair is falling from its braid. Bathed in wicked magefire and clutching her daggers like they’re prayer beads, she looks like every relief of Andraste that Cullen had seen in his life.

The trebuchet sings in the air and crashes into the far mountain, and the distant rumble of an avalanche is enough distraction for Cullen to flank and dispatch another Templar. The force of the avalanche wipes out the remaining approaching forces. A short cheer fills the air and Daphne allows herself to smirk, nudging Sera on the shoulder.

“Piss off, all I did was crank a wheel,” she mutters, but smirks back.

Their celebration is short-lived as the air fills with a screech that could splinter bone. Everybody strains to see into the dark sky, but the creature moves too quickly to be seen. It doesn’t matter – its size and sound alone can only mean one thing.

A dragon.

It swoops low and aims a fireball. The trebuchet that had just launched explodes, throwing everyone off their feet. Daphne lands three feet away from Cullen and he regains his footing first, then hoists her up. She nods gratefully and looks around.

“Everyone to the gates!” she orders. They waste no time sprinting along the village walls. Iron Bull pauses to kick in the blacksmith’s door for him so he can grab “the essentials,” then brings up the rear. Cullen reaches the gates first and ushers soldiers and mages inside. Daphne and Bull are the last ones through, and the dragon circles overhead as he pushes the gates closed.

He pushes down the feeling of inevitable defeat and starts climbing the steps. “We need everyone back to the Chantry!” he calls, instinct telling him to switch tactics. They’ve gone from defense to survival mode. He counts the bodies as he sees them, morbidly wonders if the crowd has thinned enough to let them ride this out. He sees no way of surviving this beyond hiding in the rafters like rats. Shame festers in his chest.

Daphne nods resolutely and looks around, her eyes drawn to a distress call off her right. It’s Lysette, fighting off a band of Red Templars. She urges Solas, Varric, Vivienne and Bull to return to the Chantry with Cullen, splitting with the rest to aid Lysette.

He marches into the Chantry and is thrown by the relative quiet of the place compared to the burning chaos outside. Leliana is directing civilians to stay calm and help those who need it. Josephine and Mother Giselle exchange fervent whispers.

The strange boy, Cole, is inside as well, moving between injured soldiers and speaking in low tones. Cullen still has no idea who or what he is or why he’s here, and every fiber in his being is screaming not to trust him, but there’s a niggling feeling in his chest that suggests that Cole being here is a good thing. Chancellor Roderick follows him, limping and silent.

“Commander, what’s the situation?” Leliana asks as he approaches. He rubs the back of his neck. His shoulders ache. It’s been a while since he’s done more than run drills with his troops.

“A bloody dragon is the situation,” he spits bitterly, and Leliana frowns. Another screech fills the air and shakes the Chantry walls. She pales.

“That is not the call of a dragon,” she says gravely. “That’s an Archdemon.”

Cullen is about to ask how she could be sure, but remembers that she fought with Surana on the front lines in Denerim. Of course.

Of course it’s a bloody Archdemon.

“Do you have any news?” he asks.

“Dennet snuck what horses he could into the tree line. He took any children and infirm fit enough to travel. He went north and took a raven with him.”

It’s almost too convenient, but he needs to believe that something might have gone right. Saegritt runs into the Chantry, followed by Flissa. They’re covered in ashes and Flissa has a nasty burn on her forearm.

“The Herald!” she gasps, “She saved me!”

“Is she still out there?” Leliana asks urgently, and Flissa nods, trying to catch her breath. “She heard others… they’re trying to rescue who they can.”

Cullen drops his head. _Of all the times to choose to be selfless, it’s now?_ His admiration of her character is overwhelmed with the sickening, desperate need to see her safe and whole inside the Chantry.

A distant explosion sounds. Cullen can do nothing but pace. A moment later, the door bursts open and Adan and Minaeve run in, followed by Threnn, Daphne, and the rest of her entourage.

She catches her breath and lets Eliza, who has an oozing wound on her shoulder, look her over. Cullen approaches. “That dragon just stole any time you may have bought us. It’s cut a path for that army. They’ll kill everyone in Haven.” _And we will have failed._

Cole’s response is somewhat flippant, and Cullen’s remaining patience is trickling away. “The Elder One doesn’t care about the Village. He only wants the Herald.”

They turn to look at Daphne. She’s covered in ash and blood and the exhaustion in her eyes is apparent. “If it will save these people, he can have me.”

Cullen’s heart almost stops.

“No,” Eliza hisses, icy hands tight on her sister’s upper arms.

“It won’t,” Cole says simply. “He _wants_ to kill you. No one else matters, but he’ll crush them. Kill them anyway.” It’s morbid and dramatic, but Cullen fears it’s not an exaggeration.

She looks thoughtful, not quite meeting his eyes. “There are no tactics to make this survivable. The only thing that slowed them was the avalanche.”

“So we give them another avalanche,” Daphne says suddenly.

Eliza balks. “We’re overrun. To hit the enemy, we’d bury Haven.”

He remembers Kinloch and how he was trapped and tortured, unable to save his comrades as they were slaughtered, stripped of everything. There was no honor in their deaths. Possessed, killing each other, themselves. And in Kirkwall, where too many people died in the streets because they couldn’t defend themselves… caught in a battle that wasn’t their own. He will not face it again. He will end this spitefully. He will choose the end of this fight, control his own fate. “We’re dying, but we can decide how,” he says, agreeing with the Herald. “Many don’t get that choice.”

Chancellor Roderick burbles something and gains the party’s attention.

“There is a path,” the man rasps. “You wouldn’t know it unless you’ve made the summer pilgrimage as I have.” Daphne steps forward as he rises from the chair he’d been resting in. “The Maker must have shown me… _Andraste_ must have shown me so I could… tell you.” She exchanges a wide-eyed glance with Cullen.

“Will it work?” a thread of hope in her voice.

“Possibly,” he hedges, inclining his head. “But what of your escape?” She turns her gaze to the Chantry doors and the weight of her silence drags him into the Void.

“Absolutely not.”

“Liza,” Daphne says gently, but Eliza throws her hands off of her, heedless of her wound.

“I’m going with you.”

Daphne closes her eyes, summons some patience, and looks at her sister carefully. “I will order you to stay with the Inquisition if I must,” Daphne says. “Please don’t force me to.” They stare each other down in a way only sisters can, and apparently dissatisfied with what she finds, Eliza steps back with a humorless huff of laughter and marches toward the back of the Chantry.

He motions to a soldier and instructs them to gather the people and follow Roderick through the Chantry. Roderick says something quietly to the Herald that he can’t quite hear and she nods, her brows drawn.

He steps back toward her and tries to catch her eye, but she stubbornly looks anywhere but at him. “They’ll load the trebuchets. Keep the Elder One’s attention until we’re above the tree line.” She nods into the ground and turns, but he reaches out and snags her hand.

Again, her guard drops, and her eyes fill with tears. “You…” her voice cracks, so she swallows and tries again, “You’ll be the one to tell my father, won’t you?”

Cullen feels his chest implode. “I won’t have to tell him anything,” he insists, and she manages a watery smile. She doesn’t believe him.

“They say it’s like falling asleep.”

He closes his eyes, focusing on the warmth of her hand in his, how small it is compared to his breadth, but she releases and his arm falls to his side. He feels disconnected, severed. Incomplete without her hand in his.

She gives him a final smile, chases the tears from her eyes, and turns over her shoulder to where her party awaits her. Cassandra meets his gaze but he turns away to the mass of refugees, not willing to watch the Herald of Andraste slip out of the door with her hood drawn, daggers out, to stare her death in the face and accept it.

For the Inquisition.

For her sister.

For him… as if he’d ever be worthy.


	14. If there could be some light at the end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> smoke and sweat and blood and ash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING:** about 1/3 into the chapter there's some pretty gnarly description of gore and bone showing and stuff of that nature. If something like that squicks you out, it's not a very long paragraph and you won't miss much by skipping it. As it is, if you can handle staring at Corypheus for any length of time, you can probably handle the content. Sorry and thank you! 
> 
> Chapter title is taken from the song A Map, A String, A Light pt. 2 by Yvette Young, which is 100% a big mood for a big part of the chapter. I recommend listening to it. The recorded version is so much more complete and beautiful than the live that's found on YouTube, but the live is wonderful as well!

****_Pray that I succeed_

A thunderous roar of snow. Legs burning to outrun her end. The Archdemon’s shriek, a blind leap, and a fall into the abyss.

_For I have seen the throne of the gods_

The anchor wakes her, a violent jolt of energy forcing a sharp sob from her mouth. Her eyes blink open into darkness and panic seizes her throat as she wonders for a moment if she could be dead. Her head feels like It’s been split open and filled with magefire and a deep, oozing pain in her right thigh screams louder than any rational thought.

_And it was empty_

The anchor sparks to life again. _I’m in too much pain to be dead._ She forces herself to sit up and immediately collapses onto her back with gritted cry. The left side of her ribcage screams in protest. She must have broken it, either when Corypheus threw her into the trebuchet or when she fell through the air shaft into the tunnel.

The tunnel.

How long has she lain here? She rolls onto her right side, but pauses when something digs into her flesh. With a shaking hand, she reaches down and prods along her leg until her fingers meet jagged wood and hot, sticky blood. She whimpers and forces herself to sit up despite her broken ribs and hovers her left hand over her lap, willing the anchor to spark again. It does, to her relief, and for a brief moment, Daphne can make out the relative length and width of the hunk of wood lodged in her leg. She inhales a shaky breath and debates her options.

On one hand, she could rip it out and hope she doesn’t bleed to death.

On the other, she could leave the wood in – risking infection – and try to crawl her way out of this cave. Where had the Inquisition gone, north? Could she make it far enough out of this cave to find someone, or would exhaustion and shock set in?

Someone must come for her, right? They’ll be searching for her, they have to be. As her eyes adjust to the dark she looks into the hole from which she fell. It’s blocked, save for a few escaping drops of water.

She shifts and the skin around the wood in her leg snags and she bites the inside of her cheek so hard that blood erupts in her mouth. The scent and taste make her gag. She spits the blood out, but most of it simply dribbles over her lip. She drags herself to a boulder and manages to climb atop it. Her leg is screaming. Her ribs ache. Her head pounds. _Pain is good. Pain is real and it means you’re still alive._

She needs to get out of here. She has to find them.

_Find Eliza._

She blinks back a rapid onset of tears. Sky and snow and a glowing blade. Cool hands taming her hair into a plait. The gentle laugh that reminds her of home, her soft humming as she measures ingredients for tonics…

They’d made it past the tree line. Her sacrifice was not in vain.

She leaves the hunk of wood in her leg and tries to stand, most of her weight in her left side, leaning against the boulder. She puts her weight into her right foot and stands. Her knee nearly buckles but she can manage, and so she limps forward into the cave tunnel, her hand trailing on the wall in case she needs to catch herself.

She rounds a corner and sees blue light. “There,” she murmurs to herself, but a trio of wraiths and despair demons block her path. Her hand flies up behind her shoulder to grasp at air and she remembers she’d lost her daggers in the snow on the surface. One of them lunges at her and her left hand flies up, magic erupting and a ball of eerie green energy flying forward. She watches as the creatures are practically sucked into the glowing orb, which dissipates in a few sparks of light.

_Well, that’s new._

Daphne barely has time to try it again. She falls to her knees and then onto her hands, sucking in air through a shuddering gasp. Through tears she watches blood ooze around the wood embedded in her leg. Her ribs make breathing impossible and her leg flares with pain from hip to ankle. She’ll crawl, if she must, but there’s something else, a voice on the other side of the Fade urging her to stop.

She grits her teeth. She needs to find the Inquisition.

_Sleep._

Find Eliza. Find Cullen.

_Close your eyes._

It comes as her father’s voice. She lolls to the side, falls onto her broken ribs with a grunt, and fights to keep her eyes open. But she wants to hear him again.

_Your job is done._

“They’re safe,” she whispers into the blackness, letting her eyes close. The voice in her head is right. It would be easier to sleep.

* * *

“Eliza, this blizzard—”

“Turn around if you wish.”

The wind howling around them drowns out Tara’s sigh and Cullen pauses with her, watching her shiver with a frown. A mage inclined to, and trained in fire magic, should not be exposed to freezing conditions for too long—he’d learned it when he was studying to become a Templar; to best protect their charges, they needed to learn which environments best suited them. Somewhere along the line, however, the lessons perverted into something more abusive, and he knew that a particularly sadistic knight would stake a fire mage onto a block of ice for punishment.

Tara nestles into the massive cloak she’s stolen, grip tight on her staff.

“You can turn back,” he tells her, and she shakes her head.

“Someone’s gotta watch Frosty.” Tara follows Eliza’s retreating form, only visible by the blue magelight suspended above her. Cullen takes up the rear, giving a final look at the camp they’d set up, warded and warmed, housing what remains of the Inquisition as several volunteers fan out in search of the Herald.

Eliza, at the front, has blown a continuous line of snow away as she walks, just wide enough for someone to follow her, and it makes navigating snow drifts easier. Cullen can’t see her face anymore, but he knows by the set of her shoulders and the stiffness of her gait that she is one breath away from falling apart.

 _“It should have been you,”_ she had told him with eyes cut from steel. _“What sort of general sends a girl to fight his battles?”_

Her bitter words ring in his ears. What sort of general, indeed.

_…sends a girl…_

She’d sent herself, hadn’t she?

Would she have listened to him if he insisted otherwise? If he refused to let her sacrifice herself like that?

Cullen frowns. Daphne is far from simply a girl, and perhaps Eliza has failed to realize that her younger sister has grown since the Conclave. At first reluctant at every turn, burdened with her new purpose, she eventually rose gracefully as the Inquisition’s Herald, even if she didn’t believe in the title herself. Not a selfish thought to be found, although she’d often joked of going back to Ostwick as soon as the breach was closed. He’d never believed a word, but he’s sure Eliza had fallen to the same conclusion, that she could collect her sister from this frozen mountain hamlet and deliver her back to the sandy beaches of Ostwick, safely within its twin walls.

They’re bearing south back toward the village. Before them lies a desolate field of snow, unbroken by trees and growing deeper by the second, if not for Eliza’s magic.

Eventually, as the wind picks up and Eliza’s light is hardly visible through the storm, Cullen spies an overturned cart near the mouth of a cave that he knows leads to a network of old mines running beneath the village. His shout of instruction to head toward the cave is swallowed by the wind and so he lurches, grabs Tara’s shoulder and points, and with squinting eyes she too can make out the shape of the cart. She sends a fireball over Eliza’s shoulder to set the cart alight and draw her attention to the cave mouth. Eliza pauses long enough for them to catch up to her, to be caught in the wake of her snow-repelling magic and the warmth of her light, and the trio sets off together in search of respite from the growing storm.

They break into the cave moments later and Tara instantly pools fire between her palms, warming her nose and catching her breath. Eliza casts a light to look down the tunnel, seemingly ignoring her companions. Safe from the howling tempest, Cullen shakes snow from his hair and cloak, familiarizing himself with the new surroundings. Tara tosses him a potion which he easily catches and holds up to investigate; it’s orange and the bottle is warm, so he bites the cork off and sniffs—embrium and spice, a warming potion. He downs it and tucks the empty bottle into his cloak. His fingers tingle.

“What’s this cave, anyway?” Tara finally asks, following Eliza into its depth.

“Mines,” Cullen answers. “They haven’t been used for an age, but they’re old mines that run beneath Haven. There were air shafts throughout the village, but most of them had collapsed over time.”

“Is there a chance she’s down here?” Eliza asks without facing him. He shrugs into her back, forgetting she can’t see him.

“It’s… possible, but she had no way of knowing if any of the air shafts are intact.”

“The fall alone…” Tara says, trailing off. Cullen nudges her and gives a reproachful look.

“The hope is that we find one of those shafts and get into Haven undetected,” he continues. “Without scouting the area, we’re not sure if the Elder One and his army could still be there.”

Eliza stops short and Tara bumps into her back. The corridor opens into a wide chamber and the ball of magelight has flown into the center of it, cutting the shadows and illuminating a single figure in the center of the chamber, hair obscuring their face and lying on their side.

Eliza sprints forward and as she approaches the figure, throws her staff to the side and slides onto her knees. Cullen and Tara approach more cautiously as Eliza pushes the unconscious person onto their back and pushes the hair out of their face.

“Maker.” Tara’s breathless voice.

It’s Daphne.

Cullen feels like the air has been punched out of him from the sight of her, hair slick with what he can only hope is snowmelt, the left side of her face covered in bruises and her eyes half-open. Eliza’s hands are fluttering over her body, checking for a pulse, chanting ‘no no no’ under her breath, not bothering to check the tears falling down her face.

Cullen suddenly remembers that he can help and rushes forward, only to be greeted with a spike of ice in his shoulder. He hisses and clutches at the new wound, blinking tears away as Tara throws a barrier over him belatedly. Blood oozes through his fingers, but it’s not deep. The heat from his body has already melted the ice spike.

“Don’t you _dare_ come near her!” Eliza howls, tears falling unchecked as she unbuckles Daphne’s breastplate and slips her hand into her shirt in search of a heartbeat. Tara steps forward carefully, palms up, as if she’s approaching a feral animal. “You’ve… you’ve killed her…” she gasps, rocking forward, bowed over Daphne’s body, weeping openly. She lifts her head into her lap and chokes on a sob. Cullen shakes his head.

She’s not. She can’t be.

“Look, Liza.” Tara points at Daphne’s left hand, green light flickering dimly along the line of her scar. “Look, the mark’s still going, she’s still alive.”

Eliza follows her gaze and holds her breath, turning her gaze back to Daphne’s slack face. Cullen approaches again.

“There’s something in her leg,” he says, eyeing the oozing wound. Eliza’s eyes snap to meet his and he’s greeted with rage and heartbreak. A dagger shaped like guilt twists in his gut.

“You must let us help her,” Tara pleads, falling to her knees at Daphne’s side. Eliza looks away from him to the leg, and down to Daphne’s face. She strokes her cheek with a gloved hand and her shoulders sag. Cullen takes this to mean he’s allowed to approach and he does so, shedding his cloak and gloves and prodding the skin around the object in her leg. It’s a hunk of wood, likely from the wooden bracing of whichever air shaft she was lucky enough to find. He lifts the leg and runs his hand along the back of her thigh, grateful to feel only smooth, uninterrupted fabric instead of the other side of the wood.

“I need to tie the leg off,” he says quickly, looking around him. Tara leans over and eases away the leather cord tied into Daphne’s hair, offering its length. He takes it quickly, keeping the leg elevated, and ties it around her thigh as tightly as he can. He prays that she’s too far gone to feel this and gently begins to ease the blood-soaked wood out of muscle and skin. By some miracle it didn’t shatter her bone, because as the wood slides away he can _see it_ , slick white and strong, buried beneath torn muscle and tissue. Tara gags and looks away, blinking back tears and keeping a steadying hand on Eliza’s shoulder, who is watching him with hawkish focus. He throws the wood to the side and it lands with a thin clatter.

The tourniquet holds and she doesn’t continue bleeding, but he knows he needs to take it off before they can move her. An absent part of his mind wonders about the blizzard and how they’re going to manage carrying her back into the valley. She needs far more experienced hands than his, a healer who knows more than tourniquets and bandages. The wound is gaping and too thick for him to stitch, if he even had a kit with him. Tara, sensing his predicament, takes a knife from her belt and cuts into the bottom of her own cloak, ripping two inches of the hem to pass to Cullen.

He takes it silently and props Daphne’s ankle on his shoulder, chances a glance at her face, and—

“She’s waking up,” he mutters, her fluttering eyes spurring him. Eliza strokes the hair away from her face as he works, winding the fabric over her open thigh before he can untie the cord around her leg. A whimper echoes in the air around them.

“Daphne?” Eliza asks, sniffling. “My darling, it’s me, it’s Liza, you’re safe,” she coos, trying to calm an increasingly agitated Herald as Cullen ties off the bandage. Her hands twitch like she wants to raise them; she manages to lift them an inch off the ground before falling heavily to the ground again. “Look at me, look only at me, my love.” Cullen looks up and Daphne is watching him with heavy eyes, glassy and unfocused, and his hand lingers on her uninjured leg longer than perhaps it should.

“I’m taking off the tourniquet,” he says, still holding her leg aloft by one ankle. Tara passes her small knife to him and the cord gives way with a little snap. He watches the bandage carefully, waits for the already dark fabric to become darker with rushing blood, but nothing happens save for Daphne’s small whine. Her head falls into Eliza’s lap and she grits her teeth. Her eyes lose focus and Eliza begs her to stay awake.

“Can we move her?” Tara asks. Eliza shakes her head vehemently.

“We can’t take her out in the storm.”

“She’s already freezing,” Cullen argues. “We need to get her to camp so a real healer can help her.”

“I’m not moving her!” Eliza insists. Daphne’s eyes flutter and her hand twitches again. So far, she hasn’t tried to speak.

“She’ll bleed to death here!” Cullen shouts, maintaining a grip on Daphne’s ankle. “Either she bleeds or she freezes, _or_ we take a chance and get her back to camp.”

Daphne coughs, her head to the side. It’s a rattling cough and she winces through it. Cullen frowns.

“What?” Tara asks, watching him closely.

“Daphne, can you cough again?” he asks, motioning for Tara to hold her leg for him. They trade places and she finds his eyes, pupils blown wide, and she shakes her head. “Because it hurts?” She nods. “Can you breathe?”

She shakes her head.

Cullen curses under his breath, lifts her unbuckled breastplate from her chest, and begins rubbing small circles down her chest, over her breasts, and down her sides.

“What are you doing?” Eliza snarls, about to push his hands away, when he hits a spot on Daphne’s left rib cage that causes her to cry out. “What did you do?”

“I did nothing,” he hisses, leveling a glare at her. He skims his fingers over the spot, feeling for swelling. “There, is that it?” he asks of Daphne, but she’s unconscious again. He sighs, withdrawing his hands. He turns to Eliza and says, “She has several broken ribs. We need to move her. _Now.”_

With her free hand, Tara tosses Cullen’s gloves and cloak to him, which he dons with little ceremony. Eliza takes her own cloak off and he lifts Daphne from under her arms so Eliza can fasten the deep blue fabric under her chin. He rolls onto his feet and hefts her up, allows the cloak to settle round her body before he reaches beneath her knees and lifts her into his arms, injured rib cage facing away from his chest. Daphne is dead weight in his arms and he shifts her to rest below his injured shoulder.

Eliza has turned her back on them and is flipping through her grimoire, Tara peeking over her shoulder. Cullen shuffles Daphne’s weight carefully, cognizant of both her thigh and her ribs.

“A ceiling spell?” he hears Tara ask, and Eliza nods. “Have you ever done one?”

“No.”

“Will it work?”

“It should.”

“Liza… that combined with your repulsion will exhaust you before we get to camp.”

Eliza gives Tara a hard stare before silently stepping around her toward the mouth of the cave. Her magelight follows obediently. “I have lyrium,” she mutters in response to Tara’s protest.

They get to the mouth of the cave. Cullen’s arms are already growing tired, but he inhales and strengthens his resolve. Eliza turns on him and glares silently before tucking Daphne into the hood of the cloak and throwing the dangling hem over her legs. “I’ve a spell to keep the snow off you,” she says, addressing Cullen. “Stay close to me.”

Before they leave the cave, she points the tip of her staff above his head and chants something under her breath. From her staff emerges a web of blue light, flickering for a moment before glowing strong, acting as a barrier between Cullen with Daphne in his arms, and the snow. She steps into the snow and he follows, staying close to her to stay out of the snow that blows away from her with every step. Tara brings up the rear and covers their tracks.

She stirs and blinks against a sudden rush of tears, looking wildly around her. “You’re safe,” he says into her hair, stilling her. He sighs.

Halfway down the mountain, Daphne goes slack in his arms. “Stay awake,” he chides gently, craning his neck to see her face, illuminated by magic. Her brows furrow and he sighs.

“Let me sleep,” she chokes out, angling her face into his chest. It’s almost endearing, as if she’s asking for more time in bed, but her earlier words ring in his head.

_They say it’s like falling asleep._

“You can sleep when we get to camp,” he murmurs, daring to brush his lips across the top of her head. “Stay awake.”

* * *

Smoke and sweat and blood and ash.

She smells death.

She smells _like_ death.

The pressure of an arm under her shattered bones and a rapid heartbeat echoing through a silverite cage keep her from drifting back into unconsciousness. She wants to sleep.

Why won’t he let her sleep.

She did her job. The breach is closed and they’re safe.

She closes her eyes. Her father greets her with a smile. There are tiny cakes on a table in the garden. Her favorite hound is dozing at the foot of the chair meant for her. Sweet chamomile tea and smoke and sweat and blood and ash—

“Stay awake,” a voice calls, and it sounds nothing like her father and the promise of tiny cakes. Her eyes flutter open. Her mouth is dry, but her legs are not. Her face is smeared with blood. _Not mine. Not bleeding there._

“Let me sleep,” she hears herself rasp. Her eyes close and she desperately wants to be back in that place. She’s _done._

“You can sleep when we get to camp.”

The voice, like amber and steel.

“Stay awake.”

Oranges and wine.

It’s Cullen. Cullen is carrying her toward a break in the trees filled with tents and campfire, Cullen is the one whose blood is on her face, whose shoulder is starting to sag, and despite that, he carries her, begs her to stay awake, chases her father and her dog and the sea away from her.

She hates him for it. She squirms in his arms and he holds her tighter against his chest, grunts when she presses into his shoulder. She is _tired._ A fresh wave of pain blooms in her leg and in her chest and with a gasp, the edges of the trees surrounding them dims and the crashing of waves fills her ears again.

Her feet are bare and digging into the sand. The surf laps at her ankles and threatens the hem of her skirts, and so with little regard for decorum, she ties them around her knees and wades into the water, chasing waves back to the horizon.

Her brother calls to her, lobs an apple in her direction. He misses and she chases it, washes the sand off in the water, and bites through its skin, surprised at how much she enjoys the sea water dimming the crisp sweetness of the apple. Her brother makes a face. She stretches her arms out, letting the sun bless her skin.

She’s never known a warmth like this.

She bites into the apple but it doesn’t give way to her teeth. It’s stuck in her mouth and she gags, scratches at the sudden bitterness in her throat and her leg is on _fire—_

Eyes fly open and she’s restrained by two strangers when she tries to sit. Someone is pouring something into her leg and she screams herself raw, teeth clenched around a belt that someone had shoved into her mouth. Tears like acid fall into her hair and there’s a sudden, vengeful heat in her rib cage, knitting shattered bone together, and she tries to spit the belt out so she can cry, but someone has held her jaw shut and the only noise coming from her is a visceral, high-pitched wail ripping out of her throat.

Long, cool fingers are at her temple. “Sleep, Falon.”

Her eyes roll into her head. Neither the garden or the ocean greet her. She fades into deep, formless sleep.

_It’s easier to sleep._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr dot com at lonely-spaghetti (hyphen included) for more pain and suffering.
> 
> **It's Solas at the end, and he calls her "Falon", which means friend.


	15. To Dream a Final Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisition waits for the Herald to wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive. Is Daphne? Read to find out.
> 
> Chapter title is from the song _A Beginning_ By The Dear Hunter.

_“Any change?”_

_“No.”_

A sigh from above. Daphne wants to open her eyes, she thinks, but she can’t. They’re heavy, or perhaps sewn shut, and she thinks she frowns, but her face can’t move. Her feet can’t wiggle and she can’t lift her hands. She thinks she should panic, but she can’t do that either.

Is this what death feels like, she wonders? A lot of nothing and disembodied voices?

_Voices aren’t nothing,_ something within says, but she shoos that away. If this is death, she’s not sure how to feel about it. She’d hoped for something far more pleasant than whatever this is. Something grander, some kind of fanfare to usher her into the afterlife.

Hadn’t she sacrificed herself? Is that not the noblest way to die? If she wasn’t Andraste’s herald before, she thinks that she bloody well better be now. She deserves a temple, at least.

The thought that immediately follows is that something so blasphemous should be met with some sort of retribution, and so Daphne holds her breath (or at least she thinks she might), but she’s still stuck in this liminal grayness, trying to feel her toes or the end of her nose, or anything beyond the pressure behind her eyes (which she’s not positive are truthfully closed) and the constricting spasms crawling down her throat into her lungs.

She wills herself to wake up, to open her eyes and speak, but her traitorous body doesn’t listen.

_“Will she ever wake up?”_ a small voice asks. She wonders if it might be her own. She drifts into nothing.

* * *

Eliza pushes through the tent flap as soon as she’s allowed in, forcefully ignoring the shirtless Commander getting his shoulder dressed. She’s not sorry for that icicle. She’d do it again, if she could get away with it.

A healer rises and approaches her, but Eliza keeps her gaze trained on her sleeping sister.

“She’s pulled through, but only just,” the healer says, rubbing her forehead with blood-stained fingers. “Madame de Fer has a special poultice for the Herald’s leg, and we’re keeping her asleep so her ribs can heal with little interference.”

“Fever?” Eliza asks, watching the rise and fall of Daphne’s chest carefully.

“Not so far, but we’re monitoring it.” 

“No frostbite?”

“None, Enchanter.”

“The leg?”

The healer exhales with something like relief. “Much of the wound was already infected, and we had a devil of a time picking splinters out of her flesh. However, thanks to Madame de Fer’s poultice and Commander Cullen’s quick thinking, the Herald should be able to regain full function once she’s healed.”

Eliza smiles around the sour taste in her mouth and dismisses the healer, who collects the small, terrified nurse from Cullen’s side and ushers her out the tent. Eliza pulls up a stool and takes inventory of her sister.

Her hair is grimy with blood, sweat, and melted snow, and her left eye is swollen shut, the same side of her jaw an angry purple. Her leg, propped up by a pile of blankets, is unwrapped but dressed with a bitter-smelling poultice. There’s a thin red welt above the open wound from Cullen’s tourniquet, but thankfully her foot and shin retain a healthy color. Eliza wriggles a glove off and rests the back of her hand across Daphne’s forehead, tsking at its warmth.

“A fever?” comes a voice from across the tent. She reaches for a cloth resting within a basin of melted snow, ignoring Cullen as long as she’s able to. She wrings the cloth out and dabs it across Daphne’s forehead, then lifts her head to lay the cloth behind her neck.

She hears him sigh.

“I suppose I should thank you,” she murmurs, wetting her fingers and scrubbing gently at Daphne’s scalp. That’s as much of a bone as she’s willing to throw.

Cullen grunts and she finally looks at him, armor and shirt discarded, elbows braced upon knees, a damp cloth of his own clutched in one hand. Stubble is growing in along his jaw and his eyes are dark with fatigue. With the candlelight reflecting off his skin and throwing the lines of his muscles into relief, Eliza can almost see why Daphne would be attracted to him, but he’s too hard, too linear, and… if she’s not mistaken, there are hints of waste around his collar bones and wrists. She frowns, but it goes unnoticed, as Cullen hasn’t taken his eyes off Daphne since the nurse had left him.

She returns to her task, angling Daphne’s face into her shoulder so she can get the blood and ash out from behind her ear, out of her scalp.

“How long?”

“I’m sorry?” he asks, frowning.

She huffs. “How long has there been something between the two of you?”

Her hand shakes only slightly. In her mind, Daphne’s eyes flutter open with a smile and she takes her hand, plucking at her fingers with silly noises, rolls over to yawn and tell her about the strange dream she just had.

“That’s… a complicated question to answer.”

Cullen’s voice shatters the fantasy and she looks down to an ocean of brown hair, her sister’s profile thrown into shadow by flickering flame.

“It shouldn’t be,” Eliza says simply.

He withdraws into a calculating silence, but she interrupts any attempt he’d make at explaining himself. “Did she ever tell you what happened at the Ostwick Circle?” She keeps her voice calm; not light, but casual, measured. She’s entered a routine of rinsing Daphne’s hair: dip the fingers in the bowl, scrub along scalp, work through tangles, repeat. Her heartbeat finds purchase on the rhythm of it.

“No, she didn’t.”

Eliza hums. “I thought not. I didn’t tell her everything, anyway.” She works through a knot caught around her knuckles, glances at Cullen from under her lashes. He looks uncomfortable. Good. “The Knight-Commander and First Enchanter were good friends. The Circle was run much like a university. I was allowed frequent visits home and a great measure of freedom in my research, so long as it was approved. Short of mages being allowed to live their own free lives, it was the best we could have asked for.

“Then Kirkwall’s Circle fell. Dairsmuid was annulled. Jainen was annulled. Erased. The Templars serving at Ostwick, many of whom I had considered to be my friends, started growing restless. Some of them defected immediately, impatient at inaction. The Knight-Commander and First Enchanter elected to resume business as usual. Most of us were relieved, myself included. The Knight-Captain, however…” her voice cracks and she finds her vision swimming, Daphne’s face distorting slightly through unshed tears.

“I was with Lydia when he killed her.” Cullen’s sharp intake of breath is satisfying. “He burst through the door and Purged us both before we could even react, and sent an arrow straight through her throat from the door. Like a coward.”

“A coup?”

Eliza nods. “He’d killed Knight-Commander Seamus only moments before. He wasn’t happy with their decision, but instead of leaving with the rest, he overthrew the circle. Killed the loyal Templars, took it upon himself to Annul the Circle by his own hand. Half my friends were dead. The other half wanted to kill me. I felt betrayed, more than anything. How long had they wanted me dead, only waiting until it was finally _acceptable_ to act on whatever feelings they’d been hiding? How safe were we, really? If Kirkwall never fell, would they have kept those feelings festering within, or would they have acted themselves?”

“Like ants,” Cullen says, drawing her out of her tangent. She gives him a questioning glance and allows him to continue, “one scrambles to the surface, and the rest follow in droves.”

“Harder to squash than ants,” Eliza says, and Cullen chuckles somewhat darkly.

“Why this story?” Cullen asks. “Now, of all times?”

“I had a point. You interrupted me.” Cullen leans against his knee and motions for her to continue. “The Knight-Captain had killed Lydia with an arrow to the throat, and I knew I was next. My spirit blade was only allowed during combat practice and I hadn’t had my staff with me, even if I weren’t spell-purged. An arrow was aimed at my face and he was smirking. And for a moment, I wanted to welcome the arrow.” Her fingers find themselves in Daphne’s hair again, braiding away from her temple. She focuses on the locks of hair in her hand, threading them over and under themselves, distancing herself from the memory. “My only protection was dead. With Lydia gone, I was effectively an apostate. My choices were to die there in her office or on the road, because I knew my mother wouldn’t harbor an apostate mage for long. I didn’t have much to live for, the spot on the family tapestry, the mage with no home or purpose.” She takes a deep breath. “But something pushed me to hold a book in front of my face to stop the arrow. Something made me throw the book at him, keep throwing everything I could reach until I could get my hands on Lydia’s staff and hurl it at him blade-side across the room.”

“What was it?” he asks, although she can tell he knows the answer. She blinks down at Daphne and smiles slightly.

“Her.” She huffs a laugh and shifts Daphne’s head back so her neck won’t kink. “She is quite literally the reason I am alive. She… When we found her and I thought she was dead, I was dying with her. This Inquisition has taken enough of her,” she says, “and I’ll be damned if I let it take the rest.”

* * *

She wonders if she even wants to wake up.

Dying would certainly be easier, she imagines, but she also knows of a handful of people who’d be distinctly put out with her if she were to succumb to the darkness.

Stubbornly she thinks that it’s _her_ life, and she can do with it what she damn well pleases, and if that includes dying to prove a point, so be it.

She’d laugh at herself if she could. Dying _would_ be the easy choice, but when did she ever make things easy on anyone, including herself?

* * *

Her hand is clammy in his. From the fever, he suspects, watching how it fits within his own hand. He laces their fingers together, admires how slender hers are, the golden tint of her skin compared to the pink of his, as if she holds the sun in her hands.

_Perhaps she does,_ the besotted fool in his head remarks, but he’s quick to stifle that voice. No room for his own selfish affections when she’s slipping further away by the moment. Does she know what she’s leaving behind? A heartbroken sister, an Inquisition in flux. How many would leave upon the news? How many are only here because they’re held within her orbit? He’s almost sure Sera would leave, as would the Iron Bull and his company. Varric holds no obligation to Cassandra any longer, and Dorian has admitted in plain speech that if not for Daphne, he’d feel particularly unwelcome within the ranks of the Inquisition. Perhaps even their alliance with the free mages would fall apart, and the tenuous peace they’d found would collapse around their feet once more.

Too much hangs in the balance. With every ragged breath, more threads unravel. He glances from their joined hands to her face, peaceful and unburdened by waking worries. Despite the yellowing bruises along her jaw, despite the pallor on her lips and the sweat across her brow, while her face is smoothed by sleep she is still beautiful, and he thinks it might be selfish to will her awake and subject her to the pain she must inevitably face. To thrust her into danger again, to ask even more of her than they have already. He hates himself for it. He wonders if Leliana and Josephine face any such chagrin. All they do is bicker, whether it be about mobilizing the Inquisition or sending small parties to Haven, dispatching ravens to allies in search of safe harbor. Even they, the leaders of this organization, are lost without its Herald.

He thinks he feels her fingers twitch, and his eyes fly to her hand, trace the veins in her wrist. It must have been his imagination. Wishful thinking, as they say.

Is it so selfish to want her to wake, if only to look into her eyes and have her smile at him again? To nudge him under the table and deliver some half-cocked joke that makes him laugh anyway, to lean in and rest her head upon his shoulder, to take comfort in his presence and know that she’ll always have someone on his side?

It is. That is perhaps the very definition of selfishness, and yet Cullen wills her awake anyway, prays that the Maker deems him worthy of at least this small mercy, even if she wants nothing to do with him, even if she blames him for nearly dying, for sending her to sacrifice herself for _him_ , least worthy of anyone—

He looks up again to find Daphne blinking slowly, eyes adjusting to the low light in the tent, roving over his face with brows pulled in some degree of confusion or pain or realistically, both. His brain freezes.

“You’re awake,” he says unthinkingly, wondering if the Maker heard and _listened_ to him or if it was just luck or fate that brought her around.

She blinks in response, looks down at their entwined hands, from which he immediately extracts his own with a stutter and a blush. He thinks she looks upset at his action until she opens her mouth to speak and immediately starts coughing. Finally spurred into action, he flies from the stool to fetch a water skin resting on the table behind her, returning and placing it at her lips, tilting so she can drink.

“Spit first,” he instructs, helping her sit. She swishes through a grimace and leans over the cot to spit into the dirt, running her tongue over her teeth. She accepts the skin with her own hands and drinks at her own pace, slow sips as she shifts, wincing. He can’t imagine the pain she must be in. He bites a glove off his hand and presses the back of his hand to her forehead. She’s still warm, still sweating, but she’s _awake._

“I need to tell—”

“Wait,” she finally says, her voice hoarse and low and still the most beautiful thing he thinks he’s ever heard. He pauses, crouched over the stool. “Whaaat.” She coughs. “What ti-hi-me is it?”

“After midnight,” he says.

“Let them sleep.” Her voice is stronger. An incredulous noise leaves his mouth.

“Sleep? Do you think anyone has been sleeping the last ten days you’ve been unconscious?” he asks, his voice harsh. She winces and he immediately regrets everything. “I-I’m sorry. Your sister will want to know, at least, as well as your friends.”

“Ten days…” she says instead, her eyes going distant. He moves to stand, but her hand slips into his and he’s rooted to his spot on the stool.

He looks from their hands to her face and finds her crying silently, tears slipping unchecked down her face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and he moves to sit at the edge of her cot and carefully pulls her close, resting her forehead against his collar bone and smoothing her hair down.

“Whatever for?” he croons into her hair, running a hand along her back as she starts to hyperventilate. “For saving us all? For doing what none of us could have?”

Her shoulders shake and her hand is clamped against her mouth, tears soaking his shirt. “I… I could have died,” she hiccups between muffled cries. Cullen removes her from his shoulder and places a hand on either side of her face, looking her in the eyes. “And Corypheus, the Elder One—he threw me into the trebuchet and—I could have died, I should have died, I—”

“You didn’t,” he promises. “And you’re safe.”

“I’m safe,” she repeats, a wave of fresh tears falling. He thumbs them away and nods, tries a smile.

“You’re not in Haven anymore. You’re in a tent in a valley in the Frostbacks, and tomorrow, if you’re doing better, we’re moving north.”

Her brows crease. “He’ll find us again—”

“We’re heavily warded.” She’s hyperventilating again and her pupils are wide, she’s shaking in his grasp and looking anywhere but at him, and he’s trying to throw himself into her vision, “Daphne. Daphne, _look_ at me.” She sucks air through a gasp and holds her breath, eyes wide and panicked and glassy, but she finally looks at him. “Breathe.” She exhales. “He will _not_ find you. I will keep you safe.”

“You…” she repeats faintly, following the line of his nose, his brow, his jaw, his mouth.

“I promise.”

She nods mutely, sniffling and curling into herself, and so he collects her within his arms again and holds her against him, grateful for this privacy in her moment of panic. He feels wet lashes blink against his neck and he rubs her back and dares to plant a kiss at her temple, to which her eyes flutter closed and she hums.

They stay like that long after her breathing calms and her body loses the stiffness that accompanies a panic attack. He withdraws after some time and she blinks up at him with tired eyes.

“Sleep tonight,” he instructs, helping her lie down. She shifts onto her left side and promises that it feels fine, and takes his hand in hers as he situates himself on the stool. “You’ve had enough for tonight. I’ll tell them in the morning and they can see you if you feel well.”

She nods and murmurs something under her breath that he doesn’t quite catch, her eyes drifting closed. Cullen has half a mind to ask her to repeat what she said, but her hand goes limp in his and her breathing evens out. He runs his thumb over her knuckles and lays the hand over her stomach, keeping vigil over her sleeping form.

He promised he’d keep her safe, and so here he sits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr @lonely-spaghetti (hyphen included, unfortunately). As always, comments and kudos are appreciated and heavily encouraged. Validation keeps me alive. I'm like Tinker Bell in that way.


	16. Someone to Believe In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne makes a decision. Hawke, newly arrived at Skyhold, makes an observation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Will you carry us to Eden_  
>  _Someone to believe in_  
>  _Breaking down the walls which kept us locked away_  
>  _Lead us into brilliance_  
>  _Born by your resilience_  
>  _Love us all in spite of what we'll do to you_  
> [ _If All Goes Well_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d80GDuy1OI) \- The Dear Hunter

There’s a corner of the battlements that faces into the jagged glacier-carved mountains, away from the keep and the growing bustle of Skyhold’s upper courtyard. Snow-tipped peaks glint in the sunlight like gleaming teeth, a snarling threat against whatever forces that might dare to march on the Inquisition.

 _Her_ Inquisition, if she accepts the offer.

Daphne chews the inside of her lip and recalls Josephine’s eyes, expectant and bright, as she offered the title. She remembers the quick inhale and tight smile, only barely disappointed when Daphne didn’t accept immediately and with the vigor expected of her. She had stammered, tripped over herself as she backed away, threads of panic invading her gut as she pleaded for some time to think.

She went to Eliza first.

 _“Absolutely not,”_ Eliza had said, flatly and with finality. Daphne had bristled, a reaction suggesting that she already knew what she wanted to hear… and _that_ was not it.

_“Well, why?”_

_“Your job is done, my love. They can’t ask any more of you.”_

A cloud slips past the sun and the mountain face erupts in brilliant, blinding white. Daphne screws her eyes shut as she whispers aloud her reply to her sister: “I’m the only one.”

Eliza’s reply was quick and sharp. _“The Inquisition needs someone to make the hard decisions.”_

 _“I decided to die,”_ Daphne had said quietly, eyes filling with tears. _“I decided to go to Redcliffe. I decided—”_ She had decided, in that dark future, to kill her own sister. Her throat constricts and she blinks away the image. _“I’m not a child, Eliza. You can’t have expected to just march into camp and collect me for Father once the breach had closed.”_

Eliza had started to turn back to the bookcase in front of her, but Daphne’s accusation compelled her to turn around with steel in her gaze. _“It seems that you’ve made your decision. Tell me why you sought my council at all.”_

Daphne sucks in a breath, counts to ten, and exhales as slowly and as long as she can manage it. _Because you’re my sister,_ she thinks. _Because you’re supposed to be on my side._  The thin mountain air burns her lungs. She feels as if she can never get enough air—as if she’s drowning in these mountains.

“Hey, Bambi.”

Daphne turns from the merlon to watch Varric ascending the stairs, a friendly half-smile on his face. She quirks her mouth in the semblance of a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She returns to gazing out into the valley. “Hello, Varric.” She hasn’t heard her nickname in weeks and she’s not sure how to feel about its return.

He leans against an adjacent merlon and eyes her. “How’re you doing?”

Daphne bites the inside of her cheek, wondering how many times someone had asked her that since the Inquisition found Skyhold. “I’m fine. My leg is healing. I’ll be able to ride soon.”

Varric hums. “But how are _you_ doing?” he asks, and Daphne sighs.

She doesn’t know how to answer that question, so instead she says, “They want me to be Inquisitor.”

“I know.”

“Of course. You know everything.”

Varric chuckles. “Are you going to do it?”

Daphne leans on the opposite merlon and crosses her arms, still looking out over the valley. Rows of tents have been erected next to a frozen river. She wonders if the army is safe enough down there, if Skyhold is safe, if…

If anything is safe anymore.

“Do I have a choice?” she asks aloud. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Varric shrug.

“You always have a choice,” he says noncommittally.

“But if I leave…”

“Do you want to leave?”

She pauses. If she closes her eyes, she can hear the crashing surf back home and almost feel the sun shine on her skin. Pride begs her to stay. The wind bites at her face and her eyes open, and she’s still on a castle wall in the middle of nowhere, bundled in leather and fur.

“I couldn’t go home,” she says in response. Eliza could, she supposes. She could try to rebuild the Ostwick circle or find a university, but Daphne has no place in Ostwick anymore. She can’t go from being the Herald of Andraste and an agent of the Inquisition back to lighting candles in the Chantry and fantasizing about some Templar whisking her away to a country estate. “I don’t belong anywhere but here.”

“Sounds like you’ve made your mind up,” Varric says, but Daphne can’t agree. It’s her heart that knows what’s right—her mind needs some convincing.

“Am I the best person for this?” She asks, finally turning insecure eyes onto Varric. Eliza’s words ring in her ears. He blinks. “Cassandra said that she’d been looking for Hawke… or the Hero of Ferelden. I feel like they only want me because of what I know, or because I closed the breach. Can I even be a leader?”

“Nobody’s seen the Hero of Ferelden for years,” Varric says placatingly, “and as for Hawke, well.” He exhales a low whistle. “She could barely keep Kirkwall together, despite her best efforts. And she only felt that she had to because she lived there. She doesn’t have the relationship that you do with the Inquisition.”

Daphne bobs her head in a conceding manner, chewing her lip.

“Nobody here would accept anybody but you as their Inquisitor. We saw you go down in that avalanche and we thought the worst. We were ready to build a statue of you in Haven’s remains, and then Curly carried you into camp, bleeding and half-frozen, and it was… it was a damn miracle, Bambi.”

Daphne scoffs. “Bambi died in that avalanche.”

“She didn’t,” Varric insists. “You just have to dig her out.” He turns on his heel to descend the stairs, but he pauses and turns to face her again. “You should give them your answer soon, though.”

Daphne watches him leave and waits a moment before descending the battlements herself, walking slowly so as not to limp and arouse suspicion or look weak. She wasn’t lying when she told Varric her leg was healing, but it still hurts, especially with as much castle exploring as she’s done recently.

She finds Cullen in the lower courtyard, bent over a makeshift table and poring over schematics that the engineering corps had drawn up. Tara is at his shoulder, leaning on her staff and listening to whatever instruction he’s doling out to waiting troops. She looks up as Daphne approaches and nudges Cullen’s shoulder with her elbow.

He looks up to Tara with a scowl first. “What do you—Herald!” He exclaims when Tara nods her head in Daphne’s direction. Daphne tosses her hair over her shoulder and does her best to look authoritative.

“Commander,” she says. Tara raises a brow and bites down on a grin.

“Have you given any more thought to…” he pauses, considers his words, and reframes the question: “Have you made a decision?”

Daphne’s toes curl inside her boots and something like nervous energy spikes in her hands, down to her fingertips. “I… I think so. Enchanter,” she says, addressing Tara, whose eyes are volleying between the two in front of her, “could I borrow him for a moment?”

Tara bobs her head in something between a curtsy and a nod, rolling up the schematic on the desk. “I’ll be arguing with Rylen if you need me,” she says jovially, hurrying away.

“What’s on your mind?” Cullen asks. Daphne, if she had her humor, might’ve snorted and launched into a tirade of every single thought drifting through her head. But she doesn’t, so she remains silent and leads him to the portcullis. Cullen, to his credit, follows patiently until they’re standing on the wide stone bridge over the valley, just outside the portcullis.

“I don’t know where to start,” Daphne finally says, arms crossed firmly over her chest and eyes locked on a buckle of Cullen’s armor. Coming out onto the bridge was a mistake; the sharp wind and lack of railing or parapets along the bridge is giving her vertigo.

“I’m afraid that’s not much for me to go on,” Cullen replies somewhat mildly, though she can read the uncertainty in his voice. Since she’d awakened in the tent in the valley, he’s been… _careful._ She’s afraid that the easy dynamic they’d shared might have disappeared. “Don’t think. Just say the first thing that comes to mind.”

“It’s really fucking cold out here,” she blurts out. Cullen blinks once and then chuckles.

“ _You_ led _me_ outside the castle walls.”

She shrugs and looks over his shoulder at the looming walls behind him. “If I say yes… if I agree to become the Inquisitor, does this mean Skyhold is mine?”

Cullen hesitates, his smile dropping slightly. “I suppose so, yes.”

“Alright, I’ll do it.”

“Is that all we needed to do? Offer you a castle?”

She sighs, dropping her arms so her fingers can twist into a knot. “No.” Her gloves creak. “I was always going to say yes,” she admits. “I just…”

“Needed to come to terms with it?” he supplies. She considers the idea and finally nods.

“I suppose so.” She scans the parapets overhead and, finding them devoid of any snooping guard detail, steps closer to Cullen. He shifts slightly and his frame blocks some of the wind. He clears his throat and she can see his hand flex at his side, a tick she’s noticed whenever he’s nervous or unsure.

_Careful._

She wants to scowl, but keeps her face neutral. He swallows and when she looks into his eyes, she finds him scanning her face. They’re a breath away from each other.

“How bad was it?” she asks quietly. “After the avalanche.”

Cullen closes his eyes. “Why?”

“She won’t talk about it. I know she attacked you. Tara told me.”

“We thought you were dead,” he admits after a beat of silence. She hums. He reaches for her left hand and turns her palm up, running his thumb across where he knows the anchor glows under her kidskin glove. Her fingers twitch and she bites her lip. In such a somber moment, the last thing she should think about is how large his palm is beneath hers. “But the anchor pulsed and we thought maybe that meant…” he exhales a shaky breath and blinks hard.

“Thank you,” she says, voice a near whisper.

He huffs half a laugh. “Whatever for?”

“Saving my life. Carrying me through a blizzard to camp. I never properly thanked you, and… I needed to thank you.”

He squeezes her hand. “I shouldn’t have let you—”

“It was me or all of us,” she says over him. Her hand turns over so their palms are together, and her fingers squeeze. “I’d do it again.”

Cullen blinks and nods in a sort of defeated acceptance. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

They stand there longer than should be comfortable, hands clasped between them with the brittle wind tugging at their hair and coats, both lost in their thoughts as Daphne stares absently into the hollow of his throat and he gazes blankly at her hairline. She speaks first.

“What happens now?” she asks, lifting her gaze to his.

“We summon the Inquisition and present their leader,” he answers. She frowns.

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

He sighs and her heart drops.

“I know,” he says gently, bringing her hand to his lips. He presses a kiss against her fingers and her breath catches, a blush blooming across her cheeks. “Now isn’t the time, however.”

“Then when?” she asks, following his lips with her gaze. They linger over her hand and she wishes for all the world that she weren’t wearing gloves.

He returns her hand and offers a half-smile, the scar over his lips turning it into more of a rakish grin. “Soon.” He withdraws from her proximity and retreats from the bridge. Daphne huffs and follows, hand tingling.

* * *

“So, it’s Commander now, is it?”

Cullen closes his eyes momentarily as a voice he’d never expected to hear again in his living years sounds off behind him. He turns to face her.

“Hawke,” he says by way of greeting, looking her over. She’s thinner than he remembers, but her hair is still the vivid, impossible copper that it’s always been and her dark, nearly black eyes glint like they always have. She joins him in overlooking the impromptu sparring circle his troops have set up in the shade of the battlements, watching the newly-named Inquisitor take on the Champion of Kirkwall’s strange companion.

“I like her,” Hawke says conversationally, hands folded casually behind her back. Cullen makes a noncommittal noise. “I think she’ll do a far better job of this than I would have.”

“Would you have said yes?”

Hawke sighs. “Eventually, maybe. Once the hangover wore off.”

Below in the ring, Daphne decides to take a false opening in Fenris’ flank, to which he responds by swinging his great sword onehanded in a low arc meant to take out her legs. With a dancer’s grace, she leaps over the sword with her right leg fanning over and the left following—it’s an impressive show of agility until her right foot lands, and, with her upper body angled too far forward to maintain her balance, her foot slides out from under her and she lands in the dirt, blunted daggers abandoned to brace herself for impact. Fenris taps at her ribcage and tosses his own sword to the ground to help the Inquisitor up.

Cullen’s jaw clenches momentarily. It was a foolish move in the first place, but one she would have been able to manage before Haven. Is she ready to face the field again? Is it wholly necessary to have her ride to Crestwood to meet with Hawke’s warden contact?

“She going to find her sea legs before she sets off?” Hawke asks of Daphne, watching the young Inquisitor brush herself off and thank Fenris tersely.

“She’s fine,” Cullen assures Hawke, yet unconvinced himself. “She’s…” he knows she’s impatient to get on the road. Her main condition to accepting the role of Inquisitor was that she would still be able to get into the field and ‘do the dirty work,’ as she put it. He knows it’s where she’s most comfortable, not holed up in a castle dealing with complaints and delegating people to do the work for her.

“She’s…” Hawke repeats, breaking Cullen out of his reverie. Cullen blinks and snaps his face to look at Hawke, finding a growing smirk and a familiar glint in her eyes. “Oh. You _like_ her.”

Cullen _tsks_ and pushes away from the merlon he’d been propped against, brushing past Hawke’s shoulder and away from the sparring ring. In true Hawke fashion, she follows.

“I’m not hearing a denial, Rutherford.”

“I do not _like_ her,” he demurs somewhat sourly. It’s not entirely untrue, as he’s unsure just _how_ to categorize his feelings for her, even after all they’d been through. He admires her will and tenacity, but in the same breath begrudges her stubbornness; her tendency to rush into the thick of conflict brings forward an infuriating desire to tie her to a post until a situation is handled, and her charm and charisma brings forward an infuriating… desire.

Hawke cackles behind him and follows him into the tower he took over as his office. “Whatever you say, Curly.”

Cullen thinks, not for the first time, that he might murder Varric before the week is over.

“Do you need something, _Norah?_ ”

Hawke pouts, pointedly ignoring the use of her given name. “I just wanted to check in on you. You look tired.”

Cullen scoffs. “Before you came, I had the pleasure of fighting off an ancient Tevinter magister and _losing._ I spent nearly a month shepherding an entire force through a valley and another three weeks making a castle livable. Now, I have about six hours of requisition requests to read through for the Inquisitor’s journey to Crestwood so she doesn’t nearly die… again.”

“Mm. Even harder when your withdrawal is making it harder to focus.”

“Exac— _what?_ ” He was about to unceremoniously dump himself into his desk chair in a show of dismissal, but his arms lock as soon as his hands touch his desk. Hawke is leaning against his ladder, casually inspecting her fingernails.

“No use denying, Commander. You look terrible.”

“Who told you?” he asks, defeated, as he slumps into the chair. Hawke’s eyes shift from forced detachment into something more empathetic.

“Nobody had to, but that means _somebody_ knows. Who?”

“Cassandra.”

“How long?”

“I’d started the process when I left Kirkwall,” he admits. “My last dose was just before Da—the Inquisitor closed the breach.”

Hawke’s lip twitches at the near-slip, but she doesn’t comment. “Does she know?”

Cullen sighs. “No.” Hawke hums.

“You need to tell her, Cullen.”

He forces his eyes open and _looks_ at Hawke, the tone in her voice finally betraying the air of casualty that she constantly presents. She looks tired, much like he feels, and her lips are pressed into a thin line. He can’t believe that after everything that had transpired between them—after how _he_ treated her and how _Kirkwall_ treated her—

He’d expected her to be in here throwing things at him and calling him every name in the book, screaming at him until her throat bled. Instead, she’s leaning against the ladder leading to his loft and looking upon him with pity and empathy.

“I will,” he promises. “When she returns.”

“Seriously?”

“She doesn’t need any distractions,” Cullen says with finality. Hawke frowns, but she pushes off the ladder and makes for the door they’d just entered from.

“Take care of yourself, Cullen.”

* * *

  _“What do you want to be when you grow up?”_

_“A horse.”_

_“You can’t be a_ horse, _Daffy.”_

_“Then I don’t want to grow up._

Daphne stands in the courtyard with her hands in her charger’s mane, braiding and singing as the beast stands patiently. Eliza watches from the stairs connecting the upper and lower courtyards as the Commander approaches with a rolled map in her hands, stomach souring at the way Daphne’s eyes just slightly brighten upon his coming. She won’t call it jealousy.

Cullen plucks the twine from the map and unfurls it, holding the map at the top as Daphne tugs it at the bottom, effectively blocking Eliza’s view. She tugs on her earlobe, activating a spell that augments her hearing.

“…from the gate west of the village. Harding’s preliminary reports are… problematic.”

“How so?” she hears Daphne ask.

“Hordes of undead are rising from the lake and terrorizing villagers.” Eliza frowns as Daphne scoffs.

“If it were easy, I wouldn’t have a job.” A pause, then: “How’s the weather?”

“I believe Harding’s words were, ‘oppressive rain.’”

“Hmm. We should pay her more.” She releases the map and Cullen rolls it back up, holding it at either end for Daphne to tie closed with deft hands. He passes it to her, hand lingering on hers for a second longer than necessary, and Eliza feels like some hackneyed villain for the frown that deepens across her face.

It could have been literally anyone but him. And she supposes it could be worse; he could be incompetent, unrepentant, selfish, and ugly, but he’s not. He’s proven himself at least twice over that he both takes his job seriously and cares for Daphne on a deeper level than Eliza had originally suspected, and nothing but her own prejudices and personal hang-ups keep her from approving of the slowly blossoming relationship.

As if Daphne would seek her approval in the first place.

“You look like you have questions,” Cullen says, drawing Daphne from a moment of silent consideration wherein she had stared into the middle distance. Her eyes snap to his and she searches his gaze for a moment.

“What do you know of Alistair?”

Cullen shrugs. “I trained with him as a boy before he joined the Wardens. I can’t say I know him well; he kept to himself.”

Daphne exhales a harsh sigh. “I don’t have time for lone wolves, Cullen.”

He places a placating hand on her bicep. “If Hawke trusts him, you can too.”

“The problem here is that I don’t trust _Hawke._ ”

“Do you trust Varric?” he asks patiently.

“Not recently, no.”

“That’s fair. Do you trust _me_?”

Daphne exhales a long-suffering sigh, fighting back a teasing smile. “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, Commander.”

“Unfortunate, knowing that you couldn’t throw me if your life depended on it.”

Eliza tugs her ear once more, content never to listen to her sister flirt if she can help it. She descends the stairs slowly, keeping her eyes down, finally drawing the pair’s attention as she approaches. Daphne looks her over once and then turns her eyes to Cullen, giving him a close-mouthed smile before demurely angling her chin into her shoulder.

Cullen bows his head respectfully. “Good luck, Inquisitor.” He nods to Eliza and she returns with a polite smile, perhaps something nicer than she thinks he deserves, and takes his place when he leaves.

“What was _that?”_ Eliza asks, her tone almost teasing. Daphne crosses her arms, still holding on to the map Cullen had given her.

“What was what?” she repeats flatly.

Eliza answers by repeating the gesture Daphne had made, smiling shyly and tucking her chin into her shoulder. “That… that… flirtation, is what it is. Straight out of Claire’s book.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,” Daphne sniffs, turning her back on Eliza to stow the map in a saddlebag. Eliza can tell she’s hiding a smile, but when she turns around, Daphne’s face is composed. “Did you need something?”

“I only wanted to see you off.”

“Oh.”

There’s a beat of silence where the sisters look around the air surrounding the other, but Eliza suddenly lifts her hand, extending her index finger out to Daphne. The younger sister stares at it for a moment before mirroring her, extending her own hand and pressing her fingertip to Eliza’s.

Eliza’s relief is palpable as she drops her hand and brings Daphne in for a hug, Daphne’s arms quick to loop around Eliza’s back. “Be careful,” she whispers into Daphne’s ear. When they withdraw, Daphne nods.

“I usually am, when I’m not dropping mountains on myself.” Eliza shoves at Daphne’s shoulder. “Too soon?”

“It will always be too soon, you horrible person.”

“I’m your Inquisitor,” Daphne says loftily, planting a foot in her horse’s stirrup and a hand on the pommel. Eliza rolls her eyes and Daphne mounts effortlessly, settling into the saddle and looking around the courtyard. Dorian, Cassandra, and Varric each mount their own respective horses, and Daphne gives the surrounding people a dazzling smile before looking down at Eliza again. “I’ll be careful. I can’t promise that I’ll write, depending on what condition Crestwood is in when I arrive.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll see you soon, Blizzard.”

With a whistle, Daphne nudges her charger’s flank and moves toward the portcullis, leaving Eliza to stand with her arms crossed and watch her sister ride away on her first mission as Inquisitor. She knows Daphne will prove her wrong and be just fine, will be back in the keep with a mouthful of complaints and exhausted sighs, but she can’t help but remember her as she was nearly two months ago, half-frozen and nearly dead.

She answers into the empty space before her, “See you soon, Daffodil." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive! Hope you enjoyed this, the setup for act two. I'm still trying to get a bearing on Hawke; my single playthrough of DA2 was rushed and done mostly so i could get to Inquisition with little guilt. As such, she and Fenris (as much as I love him) kind of... evade me. I'm working on it. Why do you think Fenris literally did not speak? 
> 
> I live for comments and kudos. Share with your friends. I have a fair amount of the next chapter outlined, and as much as I hate holding chapters hostage--especially with how erratic my posting schedule is--if I get enough interest I may be inclined to work a little faster on getting it posted. 
> 
> Want to talk about cats? Want to know why I keep using lyrics from the same band? Head on over to tumblr and bother me at [lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com](lonely-spaghetti.tumblr.com). I'm a lot of fun when I'm not yelling into the void.


	17. Fools in Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne has a dream; Cullen comes clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She's still alive.

She’s been here before.

She winds through the maze of corridors slick with ichor, avoids the sinister ringing of the orange-red stone surrounding her until she finds the door she always opens, so she can do what she always does and leave as she always has, dragged away sobbing by a grim-faced Dorian, so she can stop this from ever truly happening.

She inhales and picks the lock. The door swings open and she readies a blade in her hand, raising her eyes to the column of red lyrium encasing the figure of—

Her throat constricts, and behind her, Dorian mutters, “this is different,” ever the voice of her own subconscious. It’s not Eliza trapped in the red lyrium, but Cullen. Despite herself, Daphne takes a step into the room, transfixed and horrified, and he watches her. Unlike Eliza, who had most of her upper body free and leaned against a taller pillar of the whining stone, Cullen is pinned to the wall with his arms outstretched, red lyrium growing from his arms and trailing up to the ceiling like tainted ivy.

Her hands shake as she approaches him, sidestepping a table and a set of manacles on the floor, and the entire time he watches her silently, with judgment and fury in his eyes, tainted red. His armor is nowhere to be found and his shirt is in tatters around his shoulders, revealing skin stretched tight over wasted muscle and shot through with black, spidery veins.

“This is my fault,” she says, her voice half a whisper and thick with tears.

“Yes,” he replies. “You died.”

“I didn’t,” Daphne says. “I didn’t, and I’ll fix it, I promise—”

“It’s too late.” His voice grates down her spine and she shakes her head, but he blinks against her tears. “End it.” Of course he wants her to kill him. It’s how this dream goes—Eliza begs her to end her misery and she can’t bring herself to face her sister, instead throwing a knife into her throat from a safe enough distance that Eliza can’t read the cowardice in her eyes. But Cullen is different. Cullen demands it.

A choked sob tumbles out of her lips and the dagger hilt burns hot in her palm, her other hand flying up to clamp over her mouth. “I can’t,” she says through her fingers, listing forward to fall against Cullen’s body. She rests her forehead against his collarbone and it could almost be comfort—she could almost smell the cedar and steel, could almost feel his arms wrap around her like she so desperately desires—but he smells like ozone and rot and his arms are pinned. His head sags onto her shoulder and her tears fall freely onto his chest.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into his neck, lining her dagger up beneath his sternum. His breath is hot against her shoulder and she swears she feels him nod, but he doesn’t speak. “Forgive me.”

Before she can force the blade up and through his chest, before Dorian can drag her toward Alexius, she awakens with a start, eyes snapping open to a cave wall, her back to a fire. Daphne rolls onto her back and digs the heels of her palms into her eye sockets, willing that image of Cullen to fade from her memory, but a shift in the firewood draws her attention.

On the other side of the fire sits the Warden Alistair, prodding the smoldering wood and carefully avoiding her gaze. She sits up and fishes a firestarter out of her pack, inspecting it for dampness and tossing it into the fire. It catches and the flame grows. Daphne sniffles once and tucks her knees under her chin.

“Did I say anything?” she asks, looking at Alistair through wet lashes. He lifts his gaze from the fire to her face and shakes his head.

“You made some noise, but no, you didn’t say anything.”

Daphne nods.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” he offers awkwardly.

She sighs. “It wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last,” she says.

He huffs a laugh. “I understand that,” he responds, returning his focus to the fire.

A warden _would_ understand that, Daphne surmises, studying Alistair in the firelight. He’s handsome, sure—but Daphne suddenly finds an immeasurable fatigue around his shoulders. She can’t imagine what he’s going through, combating the very order that’s given him purpose, dodging his brothers-in-arms and trying to save the wardens from themselves. Worse than that, he has to do it alone.

“Who else is asleep?” she asks, following his pointed finger to find Fenris, propped against the cave wall with Hawke curled on the ground next to him, her head cradled in his lap. One hand is draped over her waist, with the other tangled in her auburn hair. Varric leans against Fenris’ opposite shoulder. Dorian also leans against the wall, but he has his grimoire in his lap and is scribbling notes in the margins, his staff lying across his lap, and Cassandra is flicking through a book closer to the cave’s entrance.

Daphne takes a deep breath and scoots closer to the fire. “Tell me about Warden-Commander Surana,” she says to Alistair, who looks ready to roll his eyes. “Not as the Hero of Ferelden, but… as a person.”

“Why?” he asks plainly. Daphne shrugs.

“I’ve heard everything about her as the one who slew the Archdemon. I want to hear about her from someone who knows her.”

“Hasn’t Leliana told you anything about her?” he challenges, and Daphne snorts.

“Do you think I’d be asking you if she told me anything?”

Alistair laughs. “Fair enough.” He sighs, gazing into the fire. “Selene is… probably the kindest and most selfless person I’ve ever met.” A pause, then: “She was younger than you when she joined the Grey Wardens.” His brow furrows. “From day one I insisted she didn’t belong there. Never to her face, of course, only privately—but I always believed—I still do believe—that she’s too _good_ for us. Not that I’m not immeasurably grateful for everything the Wardens have given me, even in this moment, hiding… in a cave.” He shakes his head. “But she’s a creator. A healer. The taint, it—it destroys everything it touches. I wouldn’t have wished it upon her in any lifetime, but I couldn’t have imagined getting through the Blight without her.” The more he speaks the more Daphne hears his voice melt into something that makes her heart twist in her body. Alistair continues, “She’s far greater than I ever have or ever will deserve. I’m still trying to figure out what I did to warrant such a blessing.”

The nerves in her palms jump and Daphne is struck with such a powerful sense of longing that she finds it hard to breathe. Would she ever experience a love as profound as Alistair’s love for Surana, who speaks as if she hung the moons in the sky herself? Could she ever _be_ loved in such a way, or is it her destiny to continually sacrifice herself for the greater good? _Am I not allowed a few moments of peace between saving the world?_

She considers Cullen, the very thought of whom tightens her palms further. He’s a man of unshakeable duty, but somewhere along the way he allowed himself the vulnerability of caring about her. How many times has he carried her away from her own death? How many more times will he be able to do so before he decides enough is enough? She doesn’t doubt that he’s as strong or stronger than Alistair, but she very much doubts that she could be as strong as Warden Commander Surana. Who else could leave a man who speaks with such starstruck devotion, as if she granted him the right to even breathe?

 _I could only hope for such strength of will,_ she thinks to herself.

She can’t even guarantee that Cullen still feels the same way about her, considering she cut everything off following his reaction to her decisions surrounding the events at Redcliffe. She stands by her decision, as hard as it is, as much as she misses him. But he’s _trying,_ is he not? Before she’d left for Crestwood, he had announced that he was planning on taking Tara’s suggestion and forming a corps of battlemages—recruiting from volunteers and acquiring a fully-fledged Knight Enchanter to guide him in the process.

It’s a step, at least.

She’s confident that he still holds feelings for her. He wouldn’t have held her the way he did when she first woke up after the attack on Haven if he didn’t care about her. He wouldn’t have kissed her hand the way he had that day on the bridge. What remains to be seen is how she can articulate her own feelings without making an utter ass of herself.

“Inquisitor,” comes Cassandra’s voice, “the storm is passing. We should move on soon.” Daphne nods and stands, stretching her arms above her head and yawning. Her back cracks in three places as she twists her spine out. She gently kicks Fenris’ ankle, who opens his eyes immediately.

“I heard,” he says, leaning over to rouse Hawke. “It is not my first time sleeping in a cave,” he continues, “and it certainly won’t be my last.” He whispers something to Hawke that makes her wrinkle her nose, rolling her face into his thigh to groan loudly. Daphne can’t help but smile at the out of place domesticity.

Behind her, Dorian is already standing, buckling his grimoire onto his hip and securing his staff. He gives her a long, appraising look and she shakes her head, turning to address the party as they collect themselves.

“Will you head back to Skyhold immediately?” Alistair asks, belting his scabbard.

“Not immediately, no. I need to do something with the rift in the lake, and that requires taking on a fortress full of bandits.” Daphne frowns and crosses her arms, staring into the middle distance. “I’m sure Cullen won’t be pleased if I just knock the door down without a plan.”

“Eh, what Curly doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Varric says with a dismissive wave of his hand. Daphne quirks a brow at him.

“He’ll certainly know if I show up with a missing limb, won’t he?” she asks, recalling the time she decided to fight a dragon with no plan and no backup. She pauses, looks at Alistair and then Hawke and Fenris, and chews the inside of her cheek. “Would either of you be willing to lend a hand?” she asks meekly. Cassandra scoffs, either offended that she would just outright _ask_ the Champion of Kirkwall for help or offended that Daphne believes that the four of them aren’t enough manpower to _take a fortress._

Alistair shifts his weight between his feet.

“I know there’s more going on and it’s a risk being spotted by Wardens, and this town owes you nothing, but _I_ have a duty to close that rift, and I can’t leave until I do so. I’m not _ordering_ you to help me; that’s not within my power.”

“Well, _technically,”_ Varric says, “you’re the Inquisitor. So you _can_ order them to, if you want.”

Daphne huffs. “They don’t work for me, Varric. They can do what they want.”

“Well, I’m always down to bust some skulls,” Hawke says cheerfully.

“I go where she does,” Fenris says with a sigh, though his lips quirk when Hawke shoves him with her hip.

Alistair bites the inside of his cheek before deciding. “I’ll help you clear the keep,” he agrees, “but once that’s done, I’ll be riding west.”

“Oh,” Daphne says. That was easier than she thought it’d be, which is good; she only had half a speech prepared, and she knows it wasn’t going to come out nearly as eloquently as she would have hoped. As they file out of the cave, Dorian hangs back to catch her arm.

“Are you alright?” he asks lowly, so the others don’t have a chance of hearing him. He’s probably referring to her eyes, still tearshot from her dream, and her uneasy lack of eye contact.

She shrugs. “Same dream,” she says, to which his face shifts into empathy. She takes a breath before admitting, “It was Cullen this time.”

“They’ll pass with time,” he promises.

She wants to believe him, but right now, every time she blinks, she sees Cullen; ashen skin shot through with black, accusing red eyes bearing into her soul.

* * *

_~~Inq~~ _

_~~Daph~~ _

_~~D~~ _

_Inquisitor—_

_~~We need to~~ _

_~~If you could~~ _

_I’ve some things we need to discuss. ~~Please~~    ~~I’ll be in my~~    ~~Come to my offic~~_

He wastes several sheets of paper and stains his hand, finally settling on something by the time the travel party ascends to the bridge:

_Inquisitor—_

_I’ve some things to discuss. Find me in my office at your earliest convenience._

_–CR_

Cullen debates rewriting it—it sounds too demanding, not deferent enough—but he scowls and folds it in thirds, sealing it with wax for good measure before stepping onto the battlements to catch a nearby runner.

“For the Inquisitor,” he says to the first one he finds, passing the sealed note. “Not immediately—catch her in the great hall.”

The page salutes and turns on his heel, and Cullen chances a glance out onto the bridge. The sun is beginning to dip—Daphne will likely find him just after sunset. She leads the party, twisted on her saddle to say something to Cassandra behind her. Cullen returns to his office. He reminds himself of what he needs to discuss: the reports from Therinfal, Rylen’s assignment out west, and…

His eyes find the lyrium kit collecting dust on the top shelf of his bookcase. A nerve in his eye jumps.

He scales the ladder and makes himself busy by tidying his space. He makes the bed and sheds his armor, washes his face in the basin he’d dragged into the loft and changes into a clean tunic before buckling himself into his breastplate again. By the time he’s finished with the process, the sun has dipped below the mountains. He sits on the corner of his bed and scrubs his hands over his face, through his hair and down the back of his neck, counting his breaths and reminding himself of what he needs to discuss with Daphne. Therinfal. Rylen. Lyrium.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there before his door opens and a familiar voice floats up to the loft.

“Cullen?” Curious with an inch of confusion. He forgot that she hasn’t seen the office yet, and so he rises.

“Just a moment,” he calls, shoving his feet into boots he doesn’t remember taking off and descending the ladder. He jumps when he’s a few rungs from the bottom and finds Daphne standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed loosely behind her back, one hand twirling in damp hair. She’s dressed comfortably in soft, dark leggings and a long purple tunic that brings out the deeper green in her eyes. She releases the lip she’d been chewing and offers a fatigued smile as she blinks slowly. She looks exhausted.

“I see you’ve upgraded from a tent,” she says, following him to his desk. He has no chair to offer her, but she takes it upon herself to perch upon an empty corner of the desk, leaning into one hand and looking around.

“I have,” he replies, searching for something clever to say. “Though if the hole in my roof is any indication, I haven’t risen far.”

Daphne frowns. “There’s plenty of room in the keep,” she says, but he shrugs.

“I prefer it here, over the portcullis,” he explains, watching her expression soften in understanding. Being above the portcullis gives him a sight advantage. He won’t be caught unaware again. “Speaking of which. How do you like your new chambers?”

She melts into the shoulder supporting her on the desk with a smile. “They’re wonderful, thank you. I think I’m most excited for that bed.” Cullen finds himself mirroring her smile.

“I’m glad you like it,” he finds himself saying, voice softening. He shifts his gaze from her sleepy eyes to the desktop, finding a stack of reports. “But that’s not why I asked you here.”

“It’s not?” she asks, feigning disappointment and pushing off her hand to sit up straight. She crosses her ankles.

“Therinfal Redoubt. The knights were fed red lyrium until they became… what we fought. By now I’m sure you’ve gathered that this is unlike the lyrium that the Chantry supplies.”

Daphne frowns into the page before setting it down by her thigh. “We found some pockets of it in Crestwood,” she says, kicking the desk with her heels lightly. “I’m… I’m sorry we couldn’t help them.” He searches her face for a moment, struck by the sorrow in her voice. She won’t look at him. She knows as well as he does, that they could have stopped this if they favored the templars over the mages. That doesn’t change the fact that the Tevinter presence in Redcliffe was a more present and obvious threat at the time; he knows they did the best they could with the information they had, and he knows they wouldn’t have had any guarantee of learning about Corypheus’ plan to have the Orlesian empress assassinated or form a demon army. They didn’t know they wouldn’t have the time to intervene at Therinfal.

“I’m afraid there’s not much we could have done even if we could’ve gotten to them,” he admits, his hand finding the back of his neck. He digs the heel of his palm into the muscle there. “No matter. Samson leads them as their… general, of sorts. I’m moving Rylen west to search along trade roads. If we find where it’s mined, we could—”

“Cut them off at the source,” she finishes. “It’s a good idea, though I imagine any information about Samson is going to be well guarded.”

He sighs. “My thoughts exactly. Leliana’s agents in the Emerald Graves report movement along the roads. There’s also a group of dissidents calling themselves the Freemen of the Dales. Their actions in the Graves and the Exalted Plains are complicating matters.”

“Do you think the Freemen are related to the lyrium smugglers?”

“I don’t believe so.”

She nods and does her best to hide a yawn in her shoulder. “How was Crestwood?” he asks, lowering himself into his desk chair.

She shrugs. “Found Alistair. Found a rift in a lake. I thought I liked rain, but I definitely don’t anymore,” she grumbles. Cullen chuckles and she continues. “Alistair, Hawke, and Fenris helped us take back Caer Bronach from the bandits so we could get to the dam controls, as I’m sure you’ve read in the report. Oh, get this!” Her voice is light, her eyes are bright, but there’s an edge to her voice as she continues. “The mayor drowned the village during the Blight to keep the taint from infecting anyone.”

“Maker,” he says, scrubbing at his cheek. “We can spare some resources to find him. Turning him over to Fereldan authorities might soothe relations with the Queen after what happened in Redcliffe.” Daphne nods, her eyes distant.

“Couldn’t take the risk, he said.” She exhales heavily through her nose. “An entire village, wiped out because—I don’t. I don’t understand. To save himself? The people? He doomed over _half_ of them.”

He wants to call it a sacrifice, but he can’t justify the mayor’s decision to kill half his village to save himself. _How do you sacrifice the very people who you’re sworn to protect?_

The hypocrisy of that thought churns his stomach. His eyes find the lyrium kit again.

Daphne shakes herself from her inner turmoil and tries a smile. “What else is on your agenda?” she asks, forcing some brightness into her voice.

He rises to collect the box from the shelf and places it in the middle of the desk as Daphne looks on curiously. He wills his hand to stop shaking as he thumbs the latch open and lifts the lid.

“Your lyrium kit?” she asks, confusion coloring her voice. She slides her eyes from the kit to his face, but he keeps his eyes trained on the contents inside—the empty vial, the curve of the blade.

“You have templars in your family,” he starts. “You know about lyrium well enough, don’t you?”

“It’s what gives templars their abilities, yes,” she supplies. “But I don’t…”

“In order to keep using those abilities, a templar must continue taking lyrium until they die. Even then, with age, they can succumb to madness as their tolerance to it grows. A templar cut off… many go mad. Most die.”

He braces himself upon his fists and leans over the desk, eyes closed. “I stopped taking it.” He hears her teeth snap shut.

“Oh.”

“You needed to know,” he says, his voice shaking only slightly. “Cassandra is aware and she’s… monitoring me. If at any point she deems me unfit to serve the Inquisition, she will remove me from my post as commander.”

He opens his eyes, but he doesn’t look at her. He can hear her swallow, however; she’s probably chewing a hole in her cheek trying to find the right words.

“And what about me?” she finally asks. “What say do I have in this?” Cullen pushes off the desk and moves to the arrow slit in the wall, leaning against the cool stone. Her eyes are sharp as she watches him, her lips a thin line.

“I will, of course, defer to your judgment as the Inquisitor,” he says evenly, fully prepared for her to demand he restart his doses.

“How long?”

“Just before you closed the breach.”

Her eyes close and she takes a deep inhale.

“Cullen. This could kill you.”

He withholds a sigh. “As I said, I’ll defer to your judgment.”

“I don’t--!” she starts, raising her voice before pressing her lips together. She pushes off the desk and comes to stand in front of him, her hands finding purchase on his vambraces. “Hang the Inquisition. What about _you?”_

He finally looks at her again and for the first time, he can see the fear plain on her face. “I can’t,” he says hoarsely. “After Kirkwall. I won’t be bound to that life any longer.” After a moment of searching his gaze, she nods and one hand strokes down to his elbow and up to his shoulder.

“I understand,” she says. His arms uncross and one of his hands finds the curve of her waist, his feet shifting to allow her closer. “And it’s… unbelievably brave,” she says in a near whisper, voice thick with tears and another, deeper emotion. “And I…” she sighs. “Please be careful.”

“I promise, Daph.” She smiles at the shortening of her name and allows him to pull her into his arms, leaning fully against him as he leans against the wall, her arms tucked between their chests and her head on the mantle of his coat. His arms wind around her ribcage and waist and his nose finds her hair, clean and damp and smelling of lavender and elderflower, and his eyes drift closed. Within his arms, she exhales a sigh and he curses his armor.

Just as her fingers curl around the lip of his breastplate, a solid round of knocks sounds at his eastern door and she slips from his embrace and toward the bookcase. He feels colder.

The door swings open and a scout pushes through, oblivious to the tension he’s waded into. “A report from the Exalted Plains,” he says, handing over a rolled map and a thin stack of papers. Cullen, not moved from his position by the arrow slit, motions silently to the desk. Out of the corner of his eye, Daphne shifts her weight and pulls a book from the shelf, the motion and noise startling the scout.

“Your Worship!” the scout cries, falling over himself to salute. “Forgive me Ser. I hadn’t seen you—”

“At ease, Foster,” Daphne says, a small smile playing on her lips. The scout, for his part, is flabbergasted that the Inquisitor remembers his name. She turns to Cullen, brandishing the book she picked up. “I’ve found what I need, Commander. I shall return it before I leave for the Graves.”

Cullen nods, wonders if she’s taking the book as an excuse to return. He doesn’t know what might have happened if Foster hadn’t interrupted them, but his mind wanders back to a single, wine-stained kiss in a cabin. He blinks away the long-buried image of her, eyes gleaming and hair tangled, wearing his surcoat and nothing else.

He clears his throat. “Take your time, Inquisitor.”

She crosses her arms over the book, holding it close to her chest, and leaves him with an appraising look. “Goodnight,” she finally says, nodding once to scout Foster, walking towards the keep with a nearly imperceptible sway in her hips. Cullen bites back a sigh and waves the scout away, finally sinking into his chair when the final door clicks shut, scrubbing a hand over his face and screwing his eyes shut against the candles that are suddenly too bright. His arms are heavy with the ghost of her embrace.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as per usual, come hang out with me on tumblr @lonely-spaghetti. There are tons of drabbles and whining to be found.


	18. Certain Inclinations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne and Eliza have a very important meeting. Cullen realizes something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooooooo boy. I hope you have your dentist on call, because this is about to cause some toothaches.

_Eliza—_

_Please find me in my chambers after dinner. We’ve some urgent matters to discuss._

_—Daphne_

Eliza frowns at the missive and dismisses the runner with an absent wave of her hand, passing it to a nosy Dorian. He puts a finger on the line he’d been reading and looks it over.

“Frankly, it could mean anything,” he admits. “Last time she sent me something like that, she had a bottle of Antivan dry red she wanted help with.”

“She wanted help with it?” Eliza echoes, smiling slightly.

Dorian hums. “She couldn’t decide if she liked it. Naturally we finished it and she tried to braid my hair.”

Eliza scoffs. “Eventually, she’s going to actually have urgent matters to discuss and nobody will take her seriously.”

“In that event, she’ll probably just start screaming to get attention.” He pauses. “Works for me.” Eliza finds herself laughing outright.

“I suppose I should finish my work in the event she decides to hold me hostage.”

“Hmm. Now, what have you found about the conductivity of nevarrite?”

Between research with Dorian and a dinner spent shoved into an ever-escalating storytelling competition between The Iron Bull and Varric, the rest of Eliza’s day passes smoothly—not counting the myriad of paper snowflakes she finds in nearly every book she opens (Sera’s doing, most likely). They range in size and design, and just like real snowflakes, no two are ever the same; and if she’s being honest, it’s more bemusing and a bit entertaining than it is an annoyance. Dorian had even flung one off the library balcony to see if it would land on Solas’ desk, but he was too preoccupied with his fresco to notice, and she hadn’t been around to see if he’d found it.

An hour past sunset, Eliza finds herself scaling the tower to Daphne’s chambers, not sure of what to expect. She knocks on the door somewhat hesitantly, slipping through and shutting it behind her when she hears a small scuffle followed by a carrying, “come in!”

Her legs protest at the very _sight_ of more stairs, but she ascends, no less curious than she was thirty seconds ago, nearly failing to keep her jaw from dropping at the sight before her:

Daphne’s bed, stripped of pillows, sheets, and blankets, as most of them lie in some cozy semblance of a pallet on the floor; a sheet tied high to the footboard of the bed, with one end tucked between books atop the desk she’d dragged into the center of the room, and the other end tied to the leg of a chair balanced precariously upon a cushioned settee; and her sister, the Inquisitor, brandishing two crystal wine glasses in one hand and a pale blue nightgown of fine cotton, wearing one of her own in lavender.

Whatever Eliza had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t _this._

“Daphne…” she says slowly, looking around the room. There’s a fire crackling away happily a fair distance from the blanket fort Daphne has erected, and within the cloth roof of the fort she spies a bucket in which a bottle of sweet Fereldan Riesling chills, next to bowls of strawberries and plums—each of their favorite fruits. “Where’d you get all this?”

Daphne smiles brightly in the face of Eliza’s confusion. “Well, the fruit is from Antiva. Josie’s doing, of course, and the wine is from Sera, but I’m not about to ask where _she_ got it from. But the cork is still sealed, so I don’t think it’s been poisoned.”

Eliza thinks of snowflakes. “Comforting.”

Daphne snakes her arms around Eliza’s waist, wine glasses clinking against her elbow. “D’you like it? Cole helped.”

“Daph…” The scent of her hair—like lavender and another flower—fills her lungs and the scene is like something out of their youth, and she half expects her twin sister Claire to come barreling up the stairs and launch herself into the tent. Giddiness settles in her toes and she finds herself unable to contain the smile spreading across her face. “It’s… well-constructed.”

Daphne laughs, knowing that that’s the best answer she’s going to get from her. She removes her arms from around her and presents her with the nightgown. “Here, get dressed. Well, undressed. Put this on.” Eliza takes it, inhaling the clean scent and placing it on the bed to remove her enchanter’s robe. As she undresses, Daphne pulls a large handful of ribbons from her dresser.

“Really?” Eliza says, her voice half a whine. Daphne smiles sunnily.

“Yes. We’re curling our hair, and drinking, and _gossiping._ ”

There are worse ways to spend an evening, Eliza admits to herself, shucking off her leggings and pulling the nightgown over her. It’s finer than she’d ever had in the circle, made of soft, finely woven cotton and fluttering chiffon butterfly sleeves, with a high waist and a surplice neckline, long enough to hit her ankles. It’s probably one of the more elegant things she’s worn, even as a well-bred woman of nobility—and it’s meant to be slept in. Daphne, who is busy pouring wine, wears more of a glorified chemise, the hem of which stops well above her knees with loose, short sleeves and a wide neck, as well as ridiculously long and thick-looking socks.

Eliza wonders if this is what she might have done if she weren’t in the Circle. Her second thought that maybe this is Daphne’s way of making up for lost time.

“I like yours better,” Eliza says. Daphne sticks her tongue out and Eliza has half a mind to pinch it.

“The one you’re wearing is too long. I’d fall over in it.”

“So get it hemmed.”

“That’s a bit frivolous, isn’t it?”

“Daphne, we’re about to eat plums in a blanket fort.”

Daphne considers for a moment before laughing, higher and brighter than Eliza has heard in recent weeks.

“Where’d you get these, anyway?”

“Our dear Aunt Charlotte d’Aspremont,” Daphne says, waving around a glass of wine and adopting an insufferable (yet accurate) Orlesian accent. “There’s a whole box of them. I’d never have bought them myself, but I must admit, they are a welcome comfort.”

Eliza hums her approval and accepts a glass of wine, crawling into the fort after Daphne. She takes a sip of the sweet wine and snatches a strawberry as soon as the bowls come close, nearly moaning at the perfect tartness of the fruit. Daphne looks similarly enraptured with a plum, and they burst into giggles when their eyes meet.

“I don’t remember the last time I had something _fresh,_ ” Eliza sighs, lobbing the inedible calyx into the fire and reaching for another. “Jerky and soup can only get you so far.”

“Mmm. Supply lines have been reestablished and Josie is swimming in trade agreements, so it’s about to get a _lot_ better.” Daphne tosses a plum pit into the fireplace. “Do my hair!”

Eliza makes a show of rolling her eyes. “Fine, but you’re braiding mine later.” Daphne nods in agreement, turning her back and shaking her hair out. Eliza reaches for a ribbon and rolls a thick lock of Daphne’s hair, still damp from an earlier bath, around its length before tying it off. Daphne feeds her strawberries over her shoulder. “Why are you curling your hair, anyway?”

Daphne shrugs as best as she’s able without jostling Eliza’s progress. “I wanted to feel pretty.”

“You’re always pretty,” Eliza grouses, pinching her earlobe. Daphne rubs her ear with her shoulder and though she can’t see her face, Eliza assumes she sticks her lip out.

“Well then I wanted to feel _prettier._ ” Eliza huffs a laugh and continues, periodically plucking bites of strawberries or the odd plum from her sister’s hand and warming to the wine and Daphne’s tuneless humming.

Later, with Daphne looking properly ridiculous with a head full of ribbons and Eliza’s hair in an impossibly intricate system of braids befitting an Avvar goddess, the pair find themselves propped up against the footboard of Daphne’s bed, debating the attractiveness of the Inquisition.

“Mm,” Daphne says, finishing a third glass of wine. “What about Foster?”

Eliza wrinkles her nose. “The redhead?” she asks. Daphne nods. “The scout.” She nods again. “No.”

Daphne sighs. “Fine. Hm. Maryden.”

Eliza nods. “Yeah, she’s pretty.”

“Cassandra.”

Eliza’s face heats. “Cassandra could stab me with her cheekbones and I’d _thank_ her.”

Daphne laughs hard enough to snort and she folds herself over her lap, giggling into her crossed ankles. “Cassandra is _intimidatingly_ gorgeous.” After a giggle-filled pause, she says, “we should invite her to one of these.”

“An Inquisition sleepover?” Eliza asks in disbelief.

“Maybe once we’ve beaten Corypheus.”

Eliza laughs. “All the more reason to beat him.”

Daphne settles against the footboard again.

“Tara’s pretty, don’t you think?”

Eliza sucks in a breath and holds it for a moment before answering to the sheet stretched above her. “Yes,” she answers, and then without thinking, “Rylen certainly seems to think so as well.”

“Oh.” Daphne’s tone shifts from sly to disappointed. “How’d you find out?”

She had caught them, Tara perched on a barrel with her legs wrapped around his hips and her fingers tangled in his hair. They hadn’t noticed, preoccupied as they were, and so Eliza had slipped out the same door she came and tried to make herself cry. She couldn’t, of course, because somewhere in her heart she’d always known. She tried to make herself feel anything other than the emptiness that accompanies confirming a suspicion in the worst possible way.

“News travels fast,” Eliza says instead, allowing the comforting press of Daphne’s cheek upon her shoulder. She feels a warm arm slip across her belly and lays a hand over her sister’s forearm. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Well, _I_ hadn’t heard anything about it,” Daphne huffs, pulling the wine bottle to rest between their thighs. She shifts on the pillow throne she’d created beneath the fort. “Do you want me to put her somewhere?”

Eliza can’t help her laugh. “No, Daffy.”

“I’ll send her to… I can have her in the Hissing Wastes in two days.”

Where Eliza can’t feel, Daphne swoops in with righteous fury. Eliza pats the arm slung across her lap. “Don’t you dare.” She pauses, sniffs at her wine, and asks, “How did _you_ know?”

“That you liked her?” Eliza hums. “I’m not an idiot, Lie. I know you like to play your cards woefully close to your chest, but I’d like to think knowing you my entire life has given me _some_ ability in correctly interpreting your frosty glares from your longing gazes.”

“I do _not_ gaze,” Eliza says indignantly. “ _You_ gaze.” An affronted noise escapes from the back of Daphne’s throat as she removes herself from Eliza’s side to sit upright. “Please, Daph. Like I haven’t seen you staring in _someone’s_ direction like the sun shines between his teeth whenever he smiles? Which is _practically never._ ” Daphne falls away to curl herself around a pillow, into which she screams quietly. With a smirk, Eliza leans over to pillow her chin on her hands, which rest on Daphne’s hip. Daphne mumbles into her pillow. “What was that, darling?” she asks through her grin.

Daphne removes her face from the pillow, strands of hair caught in her face. “I said, he gazes _back._ And then he doesn’t _do_ anything. He’s so—caught up in propriety and _duty_.” She huffs and smacks the pillow, much to Eliza’s amusement, but Daphne’s next words are more subdued. “For good reason, I suspect. I hardly have the time or energy to do anything more than _gaze._ ”

Eliza frowns. “I should think that you deserve some happiness, what with all you’ve given to the Inquisition—hang that—to Thedas.”

“You’re not the first person to tell me that,” Daphne mumbles, resting her head on her outstretched arm.

“Then why haven’t you done anything?” Eliza asks gently.

“Because it’s _hard,_ ” Daphne whines. “What if—what if he changed his mind? What if he’s decided that I’m just a dalliance, and—”

“So something _did_ happen before,” Eliza says, rolling over Daphne’s sprawled body to lie facing her, if only to glower at her properly. Daphne rolls her eyes.

“We kissed. _Once.”_ Her eyes search the upper distance for a moment before amending, “well. _I_ kissed _him_ once, but he didn’t kiss me back, and then I got mad at him and beat up a bunch of his soldiers. And then he admitted that the kiss wasn’t entirely unwelcome, but that the breach needed to come first, but then I fainted on him after that dragon battle and he re-did my stitches, and the next day he said I was making it very hard to keep his focus on just the breach—technicallybecauseiwasnakedandmaybetauntinghim—and so he kissed me and I _did_ kiss him back, but he yelled at me about how I handled Redcliffe and I realized that _perhaps_ he had some Templar things to work out, and you know the rest.”

“Yes, longing glances and pulling you out of avalanches.” She pauses. “Wait. You were _naked?”_

Daphne flushes nose to neck and presses her lips together. “I was… hot that night and he came to check on me—”

“Daphne _Adelaide_ Trevely—”

“He was _mortified—”_

“As he _should_ be—”

“At least he threw that ridiculous coat at me and brought me breakfast!”

“Yes, it’s all well and good that he _saw you naked_ as long as he brings breakfast!” Eliza hisses, barely able to contain her scandalized laughter. Her sister giggles helplessly into the pillow.

“He was a gentleman.”

“Of course.”

The derision in her voice sparks Daphne to twist in her direction, tugging absently at the collar of her nightgown as it slips off her shoulder. “Why do you care? I seem to remember you hurling an ice spike through his shoulder.”

Eliza chokes on the sip of wine she has in her mouth. “You can’t remember something you weren’t awake for.”

“Don’t start with that.”

“Who told you?”

“Tara. Why are you suddenly being nice about him?”

Eliza drains her wine glass and reaches for the bottle. “I changed my mind, send her to the Wastes.” Daphne snorts. “You have to understand, Daffy. I was… you were dead. I mean—you weren’t, I suppose, but you were _cold_. And covered in your own blood, and—he was the closest person to blame.”

“I understand that,” she says gently, taking the bottle from Eliza’s hand and filling the glass for her.

“He’s not… the _worst,_ ” she admits. “I keep reminding myself that in the end, he _did_ stand with Hawke. And that has to count for something.”

She looks up from the hole she’d been burning into the ground with her eyes to find Daphne staring off into the middle distance, her gaze contemplative. Her finger traces the mouth of the bottle in her hand. “Yes,” she says, “it counts for something.”

“Templars,” Eliza starts with a sigh, “they’re taught to operate one way from a very young age. Most are promised to the Chantry from birth.”

“I know,” Daphne agrees. “I think my gender and Mother’s terribly backwards views were all that kept me from a similar fate.”

Eliza huffs a laugh. “And it’s hard to break yourself from that training, especially considering what Cullen went through in Kinloch and Kirkwall. After Kinloch… they shouldn’t have sent him off as soon as they did,” Eliza admits. Daphne’s brow furrows.

“You know what happened?”

Oh. He hasn’t told her anything about it. “I… heard some stories in Redcliffe. I won’t get into specifics—it’s not my story to tell—but it fell to blood mages. Abominations.”

“Oh,” is all Daphne says. She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth—Eliza reaches out and taps her chin to get her to stop.

“Ask him about it,” Eliza says gently. “He might say more.” Daphne nods. “Granted, it doesn’t justify everything he may or may not have allowed to pass in Kirkwall, but it certainly puts things into perspective. And he’s _trying_ to unteach himself everything he learned, but it’s easy enough to fall back on when it’s basically instinct.”

“I’d never imagined you, of all people, to start defending _Cullen.”_ Daphne says with a laugh in her voice. Eliza chucks a wayward sock at her.

“I still don’t _like_ him. He’s far too…”

“Buttoned up and overbearing?”

“Perhaps.”

“Yes, that’s _your_ job, isn’t it?” This time it’s a pillow that gets launched at Daphne, who dodges it with a squeal.

After a moment or two of flailing limbs, Eliza finds her face pillowed on Daphne’s stomach with Daphne fussing with the end of Eliza’s braid. “You still need to do something about it,” Eliza says. “I don’t think I can bear another second of _tension_ and _gazing._ ” Daphne sighs and Eliza’s head moves with the breath. Eliza slides her eyes shut and summons some patience. Daphne is probably chewing her lip again. “What.”

“I still don’t know if…if he’d have me.” Her voice is small and the hands working in Eliza’s hair go still.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Eliza demands, honestly confused. “You’re beautiful. And far more charming than I could ever hope to be, and perhaps a little too kind for your own good.”

“That translates rather well to vain, flirtatious, and naïve,” Daphne mutters.

“You’re being hard on yourself,” Eliza says, grunting as she pushes herself up to a seated position. She grabs Daphne’s wrists and hoists her upright.

“He’s so _smart,_ ” Daphne says, the whine back in her voice. She tucks her knees under her chin and pouts at the ground, tugging the frilled hem of her gown over her toes. “And responsible, and—” she stops herself, as if recalling something private, and her voice grows sad as she says, “and brave.”

Eliza is struck with how very unfair the world has been to her sister, who’s spent most of her life in a manor having all her decisions made for her, whose only experience in love left her heart shattered on the stable floors, who’d hide from her feelings in a tree and sneak food to the hunting dogs because their father’s groundskeeper was an ass. “And you’re not?” Eliza asks, pushing an errant curl out of Daphne’s face. “How could you drop a mountain on yourself and not think yourself brave?”

Daphne’s lips curl upward, despite herself. “You should have seen him trying to teach me to play chess. He knows so much and he was so terribly patient.”

“You hate chess.”

She blushes. “I thought I’d learn.”

“Because you wanted to spend time with him.”

“It’s the longest we’d gone without talking about trying to put Thedas back together.”

“You need more of that,” Eliza insists, pushing Daphne’s knee. She sways slightly. “Maker. With how tightly wound he is, _Cullen_ needs more of that.” Daphne giggles. “More of—of this,” she says, gesturing to the blanket fort Daphne had erected. Keen green eyes follow her hand. “That’s what you are, Daph. It’s what you bring to the Inquisition—heart, and—and _love_. You see it as naiveté and you see it as a weakness, but I see it as…” she pauses, gesturing wildly around her head as if she can pull the right word out of the air, “you have the courage to look all this in the eye and choose compassion and heart over all the anger and hate you could _possibly_ feel, my darling. Nobody else could make the decisions you make without even half the love you carry. For me, for Dorian and Cassandra, for _Cullen._ ”

Her brows shoot up nearly into her hairline and her spine straightens, as if struck with sudden revelation. “Love…”

_Maker. Is she so blind to her own emotions?_

“Well. Do you?”

“Love him?” Eliza nods expectantly as if to say ‘what the fuck else could you possibly be talking about.’

She worries the inside of her cheek. “Well, it’s like you said, I suppose. I love him as I love you and Josephine and Sera, and… even Tara, though I’m still considering deploying her as far west as I can.” Eliza snorts as Daphne reaches toward the bowl of long-abandoned plums. She sinks her teeth into one, chewing thoughtfully. “But I _would_ rather like to go climb him like a tree and put my face on his face.”

Eliza sighs. “Just as I said: so terribly charming.”

Daphne smiles behind the plum she holds to her lips. “I do suppose I love him.”

* * *

The door to the main keep swings open and Cullen swears that if a nosy runner walks through his door one more time, he’ll lose his mind. A sharp rebuke is half-formed on his tongue when Daphne marches in with a dangerously determined glint in her eye, but she stops short upon sighting Tara and Rylen in front of his desk.

“Inquisitor,” Cullen says, surprise coloring his tone. “Forgive me, I wasn’t expecting you.” Tara and Rylen bow with murmurs of deference, and Daphne’s expression cools as her gaze bounces between the two.

“I wasn’t—I just needed…” she pauses to collect her thoughts. “It’s not terribly important. I’ll be on the battlements, if you could join me when you finish here.” Cullen nods, still wondering what she could possibly need. “Knight-Captain, Enchanter,” she says coolly, nodding once to his company, then leaving out the eastern door.

“She knows,” Tara groans into her hands after a moment of silence.

“Of course she knows,” Cullen snaps. “Everyone in the bloody keep knows.” At least they have the decency to look contrite. “You’d better hope she doesn’t assign you both to Seheron or Tantervale.”

“The Approach is far enough, wouldn’t you think?” Rylen asks drily, consulting the map spread out on Cullen’s desk.

Cullen jabs a finger in Rylen’s direction. “You’re on thin ice.” He looks at Tara. “You _were_ going with him, but until you can assure me that you can work together in a professional capacity and _not_ jeopardize the Inquisition with your carelessness, you’ll be joining the reconnaissance team in the Emerald Graves. Do your best not to set the forest on fire.”

“Aye, _Commander,_ ” Tara says with gritted teeth and a clenched fist. They stare silently in a battle of wills until Tara’s eyes flicker down to the map. She huffs through her nose.

“Dismissed, the both of you.”

Tara heads for the keep and Rylen departs west with a nod and his mouth set in a thin line; both slam the door on their way out, disturbing the dull ache in the back of Cullen’s head. He sighs and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, scrubbing at his eyes. He shouldn’t fault them for finding comfort in each other. There’d been hints of something in Kirkwall before Cullen left and took Rylen with him, and he figured it would only be a matter of time before they rekindled whatever romance had blossomed. In any other reality he’d be happy for them; Tara, the saucy spitfire with no verbal filter, is well-matched against Rylen’s plain-spoken, easy-going demeanor, and with the Circles disbanded, they can pursue a relationship without fear of repercussion.

Hell, Cullen should be _encouraging_ it. He would be, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s gotten in the way of their duties.

He also hadn’t thought the Inquisitor would have reacted the way she did, but—

He launches from his desk chair and slams the eastern door shut, expecting her to be just outside the tower, but she’s nowhere to be found. He motions for a guard.

“Has the Inquisitor passed through here?” he asks as the guard salutes.

“Aye, Ser. She passed not three minutes ago, Enchanter Elizabeth with her.”

Cullen thanks her with a nod and doesn’t stay for her to salute a second time, striding across the battlements and through a yet-to-be-dealt-with derelict tower until he spots her in the farthest corner, her head pillowed atop crossed arms as she leans into a merlon with her sister at her side, rolling her eyes and patting Daphne’s back. Cullen hesitates as he approaches, unsure if he’s interrupting something important, but Eliza meets his eyes and merely shrugs. She taps Daphne on the head.

“I’ll be leaving,” she says gently to the mass of brown hair propped up on the parapet, smiling indulgently when the mass whines in response. Daphne straightens and says something Cullen can’t make out, but Eliza snickers under her breath and says, “you’ll do no such thing.” As she passes the way Cullen came, she nods politely with a murmured, “commander,” amusement still echoing in her voice. It’s perhaps the most civilized she’s ever acted toward him, and Cullen is now thoroughly confused.

Daphne finally faces him, raking her hair out of her reddened face, appraising him silently. She opens her mouth and closes it with a snap of her teeth, then chews the inside of her cheek contemplatively.

“Is something wrong?” Cullen asks, taking Eliza’s place against the merlon, crossing his arms. Daphne shakes her head.

“No, not yet.”

“Not _yet,_ ” he echoes, scrubbing at his jaw. “Well.”

She eyes him curiously before crossing her arms across her ribcage and turning her face to the valley, glistening and bright in the late afternoon sun.

“I can’t quite stand mountains lately,” she says suddenly, frowning. “I keep dreaming of avalanches.”

Cullen frowns. “I can’t imagine you’re comfortable in a mountaintop fortress.”

Daphne shrugs. “Gatsi’s notes are helpful. He insists Skyhold isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.” She taps her elbow with the opposite hand, a light drumming of slender fingers that momentarily distracts him. “And we’re _on_ the mountain this time. Not under it. That helps too.”

Cullen watches her and wonders what else she keeps to herself, what demons of her own she might carry that he might never know. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to speak of her own.

Her voice cuts the frown off his face. “That’s not why I asked you out here,” she admits.

“I’m sure,” he agrees. “Why _did_ you ask me out here, if not to stare into the valley?”

A rosy blush blooms across her cheeks and she presses her lips together, her eyes steadfast in the distance.

_Oh._

He’d wondered when this conversation would come, not quite sure who would pluck up the courage to initiate it. He knew it’d have to be her—by now he knows he’ll follow her into the Void no matter how their relationship stands, but it’s important that _she_ be the one to initiate. He steels himself.

“I almost died,” she says, apropos of nothing. Cullen swallows hard.

“Yes,” he says, his voice almost giving out. He remembers too clearly skin too pale, a body too cold, the scream forced from her mouth when they poured the alcohol into her leg.

“And I could die again.” She winces. “Actually die, I mean.”

Cullen decides to remain silent and let Daphne find the point she’s trying to make, focusing on not imagining the letter Cassandra might have to write from the field detailing the Inquisitor’s untimely demise.

“And things like… war and politics seem rather petty, knowing that you could die at any moment.”

“War seems petty to you?” he asks, amused.

“Of course not,” she snaps, glaring at him for daring to interrupt her. He huffs a laugh. “What I’m saying is… it’d be foolish not to take advantage of… certain inclinations… given the impermanence of our places on earth.”

“Certain inclinations,” he repeats, daring to grin. Her face erupts in a rather adorable wash of red.

“We owe it to ourselves to find some happiness in this godless war,” she says.

Cullen uncrosses his arms so his hand can find her hip farthest from him, angling her away from the valley. “So what you’re saying is kissing you would be good for morale?”

“Are you _flirting_ with me?”

“I can’t be sure,” he says. “I haven’t had the practice to know when I am. Are you feeling rather flirted _with?_ ”

Daphne’s lips curl from a pout into a coy grin as she places a hand on his chest. “I must confess that my morale is improving. I believe you had other ideas?”

Cullen hums, his other hand resting on her forearm. He glances at her lips, pink and soft and utterly distracting. “If I could run the suggestion by you once more,” he murmurs.

“Leave it on my desk and I’ll get to it in the morning,” Daphne says, her hand sliding to his shoulder and the other splaying over his bicep.

“I think I make a more convincing argument in person.”

He closes the distance between them, satisfied in the noise that gets stuck in the back of her throat. Her hands splay across his chest before she rises onto her toes and throws her arms over his shoulders, surging forward with such alacrity that Cullen’s hand finds her waist to brace her and he’s chuckling against her fervent lips, sweet in their affection and opening beneath his.

He breaks away if only to catch his breath, but he becomes ensnared in her glassy eyes. He flicks away a lock of her hair and she tries a tremulous smile. His hands frame her ribcage and he beckons her closer with the slightest pressure, folding her within his arms to kiss her once more, gentler and deeper, seeking to taste her. He moans low in his throat as her fingers snake into his hair and he draws her lower lip between his teeth, which earns him a stifled gasp. Cullen breaks the kiss and rests his forehead upon hers, eyes shut, his heartbeat in his palms against her ribcage as he quells far more dangerous thoughts.

Daphne withdraws her arms to rest her hands against his chest again and he’s grateful for the lack of plate armor that would impede this degree of intimacy, relishing in the soft skin of her fingertips toying with the half-done laces of his tunic, the rise and fall of her chest as she catches her breath. She laughs breathlessly.

“Convincing indeed,” she says with a wide grin. Cullen can’t help but return her smile, his face warming as he looks pointedly over her head. Daphne leans in and gives his chin a chaste kiss before nuzzling her head into his shoulder, invading his lungs with the lavender scent of her hair. He closes his eyes and presses his lips to her crown, nearly swaying, and he pretends for a moment that she’s not the Inquisitor and he’s not the commander of her armies; he is a man and she is a woman, and he is in love with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know the drill. come hang out on tumblr @lonely-spaghetti. 
> 
> I'm half-tempted to write the last scene from Daphne's perspective and post it on tumblr because I want to publish the conversation she and Eliza have on the battlements.


	19. Graves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tara offers a new perspective. Cullen and Eliza get candid.

The Emerald Graves carry a haunting sort of beauty, a sort that forces caution in every step and vigilance round every bend. Trees, planted in memory of fallen Dalish knights, tower high into the sky, their canopy winding together to blanket the ground in cool, verdant shadow. Even though the sun often cannot breach the canopy, the air remains warm, a sun-touched, breathing glow that relaxes and invigorates all at once.

Tara hates every inch of it.

The humidity in the air coats her lungs and mutes her magic, dampening the fire in her bones to a dull flicker where it’s usually a ready spark; still there, still willing to be called upon, but harder to access and maintain.

Meanwhile, her companion is falling over himself to take everything in, gray eyes alert and hungry, rapidly filling his book with sketches and notes.

“For my clan,” Lavellan eventually says as they make camp in Briathos’ Steps. “Keeper would love this.”

Tara thinks of her father on the outskirts of Wycome, wondering when or if she’d get a chance to return home. The forest surrounding her almost reminds her of home, but the trees are wrong. Tall, yes, but the trunks are too wide, and the bark is different, and the smell isn’t right. She misses the towering evergreens and the pinecones that pop when thrown into the fire.

They spend a full three days scouting and mapping before they hear word that the Inquisitor is in the Graves, slowly carving through the Freemen of the Dales to broker a deal with Fairbanks. With any luck, Tara and Eirlan won’t run into the Inquisitor and will be left alone to map the region and await new orders.

Preferably somewhere arid and hot.

No luck; they return to the camp on the Steps to find the Inquisitor squatting on a tree trunk re-purposed into a stool, pale-faced and eyes shut, right arm braced in the grip of the Seeker.

“On three,” she says. The Inquisitor opens one eye to peer at her sidelong.

“On three or after th—mother _fucker_ , that hurts!” She shouts after a loud crack. Her left hand sparks wildly against her right shoulder as she rubs the pain out. Dislocated. “You didn’t count, Cassandra.”

“I find it’s easier if you’re not expecting it,” Cassandra says casually, striding to the potion table to toss the Inquisitor a vial of viscous, red potion.

Dorian emerges from a tent and Tara does not fail to notice the way his gaze lingers over Eirlan before meeting Tara’s eyes. “Ah, Enchanter Soderquist.” The Inquisitor turns her cool, verdant gaze to hers, nods once, and sets eyes on Eirlan.

“Lavellan!” she exclaims, rising from the stump. “I was wondering where Cullen assigned you.” Eirlan flushes, vallaslin burning bright over darkening cheeks. Tara resists the urge to roll her eyes, busying herself instead with flicking through the correspondence on the requisition table.

“Inquisitor,” he stammers out after a hasty salute. Tara peeks over her shoulder to find Trevelyan’s face fall at the honorific. She wonders if they’d been friends before her promotion; if that’s the case, it would explain Eirlan’s boyish crush on her. “The Commander was gracious enough to fulfill my request of being assigned here. I’d hoped to learn more of my people…”

“It’s beautiful out here,” she agrees, using her uninjured arm to pat Eirlan’s bicep. “You’ve had some time to scout?”

“Aye, Inquisitor. The map’s on the table.”

Tara slides from the table as Trevelyan approaches, as if two magnets of the same polarity drawing too close, but she does manage a civil nod in response to Trevelyan’s inclined head.

“Have you had much trouble?” Cassandra asks to the back of Tara’s head. She turns and salutes the Seeker.

“Not much. Isolated pockets of Freemen that were easy enough to take down as we found them.”

“And the templars?” The Inquisitor asks. Tara glances over at the table to find her with an open notebook, sketching a scaled-down map. She doesn’t look up, but her chin is tilted in Tara’s direction.

“We haven’t found any,” Tara says, confusion plain on her face. “Cul—the commander hadn’t warned us to look for them.”

Trevelyan makes a displeased noise in the back of her throat and blows bits of charcoal off her notebook before snapping it shut and tossing it onto the table. “Of course not,” Tara hears her mutter. She shares a private glance with Cassandra, who shrugs and shakes her head, before brushing charcoal smudge onto her breeches and reaching into her hair to unpin her braided bun.

“Right, well,” she says through a mouthful of pins, untangling the disheveled plait and rebraiding it, “That’s thrown my plans a bit.” She ties the braid off and lies it over her shoulder, massaging her temples. “So here’s the _new_ plan. Cassandra and Dorian, regroup with Bull and Solas, and keep following this damned Freemen trail. I’ll take Lavellan and Soderquist to hunt down those templars.”

“What templars?” Tara finds herself asking. Trevelyan lifts a single, well-kept brow and doesn’t answer her.

“We’ll rendezvous at the Gracevine camp. Questions?”

“Will you be alright given your current condition?” Cassandra asks, gesturing to Trevelyan’s newly relocated shoulder. She rolls it out, swallowing a wince.

“It’s a reconnaissance mission, Cassandra. I’m not storming another keep.”

Dorian snorts and even Cassandra manages a smile, entertained by some private joke that the two scouts obviously aren’t privy to. The leather over Tara’s palms heat.

Cassandra nods and picks up more potions, throwing a blue vial to Dorian. He pats Trevelyan’s good shoulder. “I dread every moment I spend in our separation, my dear,” he sighs. Trevelyan nods sympathetically.

“I’ll collect a blossom for every moment I think of you, my love,” she says, “and you’ll find upon our reunion I’ll have plucked a garden for you.”

Cassandra makes a gagging noise and belts her scabbard. “We’ll see you at sundown, Inquisitor.” Trevelyan flutters her hand with an affectated bow.

“Ready yourselves,” she says to Eirlan and Tara, shrugging her harness on and buckling it across her ribs. She slides her arms into her green-dyed leather coat and tucks the notebook into a pocket within. Tara rolls her staff between her hands and watches Eirlan belt his quiver to his hip and knee, bow slung across his shoulder.

“So these templars…” Eirlan ventures once they’ve descended the hill and are traversing north across the forest floor. Trevelyan sighs.

“A personal request from the commander,” she says. “He has a lead on where they’re getting their lyrium from and wants to cut off the supply.”

“In the Graves?” Tara asks. “He thinks it’s this far west?”

“Maybe farther,” Trevelyan says grimly. “I saw a small convoy on our way in but was preoccupied and following a hot trail.”

“If they’re transporting, they’re probably sticking to the roads,” Eirlan offers, checking over his shoulder as he brings up the rear of the small party.

“The one I saw was,” the Inquisitor confirms. “We’ll hit them and then travel north.”

They fall into relative silence and Tara is forced to admit that the Inquisitor moves with an enviable grace, near silent in her boots on the forest floor. She’s a cautious mover, eyes scanning first along the ground for anything that might impede her gait, then along the sides of her vision for anything that might ambush her, before moving onward. There have been moments where she darts forward to retrieve a clipping of a rare herb and stuff it into her pack, but so far Tara’s seen none of the carefree, lackadaisical attitude characteristic of Daphne Trevelyan in the early days of the Inquisition. It must have passed with the promotion.

“Wait,” she says urgently, voice low, left hand poised in the air. “Get down.”

The three duck into some low-lying brush and Tara notices there are daggers in Trevelyan’s hands, quicker than she even had time to process. “Lavellan, get some high ground.” Tara peers through the brush to see a pair of Red Templar knights and an archer along with a covered crate and a horse run so ragged it looks skeletal. Eirlan glides to a nearby tree and scales it effortlessly.

“Three of them,” he murmurs, voice carrying to the pair in the bushes. “Decently armed. Not a huge force.”

“The second you shoot, you’ll give away our position,” Trevelyan sighs. “So make it count. On my signal.”

Without any further word, she melts from the brush, lost to Tara’s view though she was just next to her. Frustrated, she glances up at Eirlan, balanced high on a branch, arrow nocked and ready to fly, who just shrugs and shakes his head. They hadn’t discussed a signal. She calls up a fire mine, focuses on the spot she wants to prime it, and draws upon her frustration to feed it.

Trevelyan’s signal comes as she grapples a templar from behind, paces ahead of Tara, knocks his helmet off, and yanks his head back to expose his neck. An arrow embeds itself in the templar’s neck, cutting off his yell of surprise, and Trevelyan throws his body at the other knight and skitters away to put distance between the two.

The archer follows the arrow’s path and spots Eirlan, firing just as Tara’s mine explodes under his feet. He runs from it, but he’s already engulfed in flames. Another arrow through his armor puts him down and Tara aims a fireball at the furious knight, twirling his sword in a nauseating facsimile of the templars she’d been raised with, but his pauldron absorbs it, flames licking away to leave blackened metal. He lunges at Trevelyan but she side-steps him easily, bringing a dagger up in an arc that slices between plates and fills the air with a howl.

He attempts to bash her with his shield and she ducks between his feet and sinks her off-handed blade into his back to the hilt, twists, and withdraws with a snarl. The knight falls to his knees with a gurgle just as Tara rushes forward, another mine primed at her fingertips. Trevelyan kneels to wipe the blades on his skirt and sheathes them at her back, lips pressed into a thin line.

It’s over as quickly as it had started. They’d barely had time to react before the Inquisitor infiltrated and took them apart. If Tara relished in killing, she’d be disappointed, but she doesn’t, so she settles on stunned.

When did the Inquisitor become so efficient?

Eirlan hops from the branch and jogs over. “That was easy, eh?”

“There’s more,” Trevelyan mutters, rising with a piece of parchment in her hand. “And not much of a lead this one is.”

“What’s it say?”

She sighs, folding it and stowing it between pages in her notebook. “They have a mage and it’s not from the Deep Roads. It’s being mined from somewhere.”

“A mage?” Eirlan asks, brow drawn. “What’s that matter?”

“It could mean anything,” Tara says through a frown. “They could be experimenting with red lyrium-fueled magic, enchanting with corrupted runes… it’s anybody’s guess.”

Trevelyan looks her over with an appraising glance and Tara is struck with how pretty she is, even covered in blood. It’s annoying. She’s not the arresting beauty that Eliza is, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and eyes bluer than a winter sky, but they share similar eye shapes, catlike and shrewd, and Daphne’s have an inviting softness when she’s not being a complete bitch for no reason.

Well, there _could_ be a reason. Her attitude towards Tara had cooled considerably once she and Rylen had been discovered, but even Cullen had been more exasperated than angry at the development. Tara thinks it might even be jealousy, but she’d never picked up any indication that Trevelyan had harbored feelings for Rylen in the past. Had she misread the tension between Trevelyan and Cullen, or is it a ruse to get closer to his second in command?

That thought sends Tara’s blood simmering and she wills the fire from her hands, eyeing Daphne with new ire.

“North, then?” Eirlan asks, oblivious.

Daphne nods, long braid shifting across her back. Tara entertains the thought of burning it off. “North.”

It makes sense, if Tara thinks hard enough. Cullen, though a private man, is terrible at keeping his emotions off his face, and Tara’s spent enough time with him to know that his feelings for the Inquisitor are significant. She stares through Daphne’s back and imagines her heart, how it might feel to reach in and squeeze it. Could she be the kind of person to toy with a man’s affections for her own gain?

She _is_ half-Orlesian, after all.

And it would explain her cool reception of the two when she’d stumbled into Cullen’s office when he was in the middle of his reprimand and assignment. Her eyes were positively glacial when they passed between Tara and Rylen.

It could also explain Eliza’s subsequent distancing from Tara too. She’d been quieter than usual, which is saying something, and perhaps a bit agitated, and Tara couldn’t get a word out of her about what might have been bothering her. Being Daphne’s closest confidante, it stands to reason that she could have told her about her feelings and developed her own version of resentment for the situation.

_Sounds like a stretch_ , the rational part of her brain warns, but Tara isn’t known for listening to that part of her brain. She leans into the idea, content with the image of a Daphne who kills with ease and collects men’s hearts like trophies.

She wonders how she might be able to warn Cullen, if she’d get the chance at all.

They stumble into the next Templar convoy by accident while avoiding giants. The encounter is quick, violent, and hot, and Tara is forced to call back her fire before the smoke and flames attract a giant’s attention. She wills the heat to absorb into her skin, breaking her into a sweat and forcing her to doff her coat and carry it while Trevelyan rifles through the cart for hints. Her triumphant expression falls as she reads it.

“What is it?” Eirlan asks, voice a mixture of eager and apprehensive.

“Samson.”

Tara’s heart stutters, residual tension from her life in Kirkwall. “Didn’t we sort of assume he was involved?” she asks flatly, waving away the smoke pouring off her shoulders.

Trevelyan clicks her teeth and ponders her words. “I did, but… I don’t know. I suppose I’d hoped Cullen was wrong.”

“Why?”

Eirlan shoots her a sharp glance but Tara only crosses her arms and stares Trevelyan down as she sits heavily on the back of the cart. She doesn’t look at Tara but down at the page, folding it before stowing it with the other letter and staring into the ground. “Because if Samson’s involved it makes it more personal for him,” she finally says. “And this… it’s important, but it’s not something I want him killing himself over.”

Tara swallows around the anger in her throat and unclenches the fists balled into her elbows. That sounds suspiciously like someone who cares about Cullen and doesn’t fit her current theory that Trevelyan’s a heart-eating bitch.

An inconvenient development.

“Anyway. One or two more and we might have what we need to figure out where this is coming from.”

They migrate carefully around the valley inhabited by giants and massive, angry-looking bears, stopping at another camp to replenish water and potions and mark off new spots on the map, and Trevelyan takes out her braid _again_ only to pile her hair on top of her head in a haphazard bun. Eirlan, again, stares on, enchanted. There has to be a way to nip this in the bud.

“So,” Tara begins loudly as they move along a path. Trevelyan angles her ear over her shoulder to listen. “You and Cullen.”

She huffs. “What about it.”

“So there’s an _it_?” Tara asks, quirking a brow that Trevelyan can’t see. She can practically feel Eirlan’s tension behind her.

“It’s… new.”

Tara hums and throws a glance behind her to Eirlan, who glares holes into Tara’s heels with darkened cheeks.

“You and Rylen, though,” she says mildly, though there’s an edge to her voice. Tara’s teeth clench.

“Less new.”

“Oh?”

“There was… interest in Kirkwall. Then Cullen took him with him to Haven and I didn’t see him until you brought us from Redcliffe.”

Trevelyan makes a noise in the back of her throat. “And there was nobody in between?”

“Er… no.”

Why would she even ask that?

She notices Trevelyan’s shoulders sag. “Rather romantic, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” Tara agrees, thinking of a certain shade of blue and a certain warm laugh. A different kind of heat spreads over her palms. She bites back a grin.

Trevelyan’s attitude towards her undergoes a complete shift after that. She’s cordial and almost friendly, going so far as to let her take point on the last group of templars they find.

She’ll never understand what caused such a fast shift, but she supposes she shouldn’t question it.

* * *

_Commander,_

_All signs point to the Emprise, Samson definitely involved. Moving east into the mountains. Copies of notes found in the Graves attached._

_Reassign Soderquist somewhere drier. The humidity here interferes with her magic._

_\--Trev_

* * *

_Inquisitor—_

_Preliminary reports indicate Emprise swarming with Red. River frozen, trade cut off, rifts in the valleys. Suledin Keep reinforced, too—despite previous success in Crestwood I recommend not engaging without a plan._

_Cdr. CSR_

* * *

_Cullen_

_Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the cold?_

_You were right, red everywhere. Sealing rifts where I can, avoiding fights and cutting through mountains. Destroying deposits as I find them. Can’t swing a nug without hitting some. I think we’re closing in on the quarry.  
_

_Send my sister, please. She’s probably foaming at the mouth for some action and she’s well acclimated for the Emprise._

_Scouted the keep. It’d take a siege to take it back. I may be impatient but I’m not stupid._

_Trev_

* * *

_Daphne:_

_I had no idea you were disinclined to snow and mountains. You should have said something sooner._

_Sister to deploy with small force to aid in taking quarry and keep. Focus on civilian relief until they arrive._

_Be careful.  
Cullen_

* * *

 

He stares down at the words on the vellum with a degree of bemusement. He’s no stranger to her brand of correspondence, and maybe he shouldn’t be surprised to find a lack of affectionate salutation—it is, after all, professional correspondence, and she _is_ capable of maintaining her professionalism.

Their exchange the day she departed was tense, if only because they were surrounded by half the keep and he couldn’t see her off the way he felt she deserved, but he’d hoped the warmth of his hand under hers as he assisted her mount had lingered.

He _wanted_ to claim her lips in a fiery kiss and command she return to Skyhold—to him—safely, but there was a watchful sister and an all-too-interested Tevene Altus on his flank, so he had to settle for lingering hands and meaningful glances. The flush on her cheeks and the shy smile as she wound the reins around her hands were almost enough—but the words scrawled out on the slips of paper before him are different.

_Are you a child?_ The logical voice in his head sneers. _She has a job. She’s doing her job._

Objectively, he knows this. He tries to will his heart to believe it, but the days following that kiss on the battlements—stirring and dizzying and world-shifting—have unraveled him, devolved until he’s seventeen again, sweating in his armor because a young Templar named Rosalind had bested him in a sparring match and _winked_ at him, and lately the requisition reports aren’t as important as Daphne’s smile, and troop movements don’t require nearly as much attention as the memory of that kiss does.

The lyrium withdrawal doesn’t help. He hates to admit that both Daphne’s and Cassandra’s absence have left him caring for himself less than he needs. He sleeps less, foregoes meals to catch up on work that’s fallen behind due to distraction. It’s a particularly difficult day when he strides across the battlements toward the keep and he swears he smells her on the wind, tangles of lavender clinging to the inside of his lungs. Guilt snags at his navel; she’d be disappointed to see how he’s been treating himself. She’d likely nag, force an apple into his hand, and then apologize for overstepping, not knowing that she’s likely the only person who’s capable of reminding him that he’s human.

What sort of pressure would that put on her, if he were to tell her? She’s got enough to balance as Inquisitor. He couldn’t bear to burden her further.

He looks up for the first time since entering the keep and finds just who he needs, just where he expected to find her.

“Enchanter,” Cullen greets, several paces from Josephine’s desk. Eliza looks up from the correspondence in her hand to Cullen.

“Commander,” she responds, polite and perhaps confused. “Is there something you need?” Josephine halts her endless writing to peer between the two curiously.

“In fact, I’m just on my way to the war room to look over our troop movements, if you could join me for a moment.”

Eliza doesn’t try to hide her surprise, eyes sliding from his to Josephine’s. She shrugs and they share a silent, private conversation entirely too reminiscent to Cullen of the sorts of looks his sisters would give each other.

“I suppose so,” Eliza says, laying the stack of letters previously occupying her lap onto Josephine’s desk.

“I’ll need her back soon,” Josephine warns, dark brows knit together in some semblance of severity, offset by a gleam in her eye, no doubt pleased that Eliza and Cullen have exchanged more than two sentences without snapping at each other.

Cullen is eager to see that continue.

Eliza rises and Cullen waits until she’s next to him before walking toward the war room. Her arms are loosely crossed, hands cupped under opposite elbows, black enchanter’s robes billowing around slippered feet, and the awkward silence stretches into a gulf between them. What does one say to someone when the only thing they share in common is a deep, abiding fondness for the same person?

Cullen pushes open the heavy door and allows Eliza inside, who glances curiously about the chamber before taking Daphne’s usual spot at the table. She looks down at the map with dim recognition, noting markers and symbols without fully understanding what they mean.

“You didn’t bring me in to discuss troop movements,” she says mildly as Cullen takes his usual spot opposite her.

“No,” he confesses, finding Daphne’s notes stacked and rolled in his pocket. He tosses them to her side of the table and she unfurls them with long fingers, reading through them quickly.

Eliza scoffs. “I am not _foaming at the mouth_ ,” she mutters, coiling the strips of paper again and tossing them back to Cullen. He pockets them after spreading out a regional map of the Emprise. “When shall I leave?”

“Tomorrow, if you’re up for it.” He shuffles through a stack of Harding’s reports and notes the locations of new Inquisition camps.

“This quarry is where Samson is getting his lyrium from?” she asks, arms still crossed. Cullen, leaning into his hands on the table, finds her eyes and nods.

“Yes. It’s an extensive operation and it’ll take more than her small force to shut it down, confident as she is in her abilities.”

Eliza’s mouth twitches into a half smile. “And how confident are _you_ in her abilities?”

Cullen scoffs and pushes away from the table. “Lack of confidence in her implies lack of confidence in myself, seeing as how I taught her most of what she knows,” he says. Upon seeing a raised brow from Eliza, he adds, “I _know_ she knows how to fence. It doesn’t count.”

Eliza chuckles—at something Cullen says, no less. Cullen thinks the world might have actually ended. “So what will my presence change?” she asks.

“You won’t be alone. A small battalion of our mages and non-templar soldiers will be traveling with you, and with enough force we should be able to take back Suledin Keep and establish a more permanent presence.”

“And I’ll… stay there?” she asks.

“Not necessarily. If you prove yourself capable of leading in the Emprise, it could lead to more assignments in the future.”

“Leading.”

Cullen shrugs, scrubs his hand along the stubble on his jaw until it lands on the side of his neck.

“Up until six months ago, I was a Circle mage who was only allowed to study the practical theory of arcane martial arts, and you’re asking me to command a battalion?”

Cullen blinks placidly, recognizing in her Daphne’s tendency to spiral when faced with unexpected responsibility. He tells Eliza what he’d told Daphne in the past: “You’re allowed to say no.”

She huffs. “Of course I’ll _do_ it,” Eliza mutters, crossing her arms defiantly. _Ah. Trevelyan tenacity._ “I’m just… baffled that you trust me. If you’ll remember, I assaulted you.”

“Doesn't sound familiar.”

She glowers at him. “You’re doing me a favor.”

Cullen barely suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. “You told me how you got out of Ostwick. Assuming that’s true—and you don’t strike me as the type to embellish stories—you’re a quick thinker and you act well under pressure. Daph—the Inquisitor—” he doesn’t fail to notice her almost-imperceptible smirk against his near slip of her name— “told me you were Harrowed at only seventeen, which shows incredible strength of will, and I saw you fight the night Corypheus attacked Haven. The only favor I’m doing you, Eliza, is presenting you with an opportunity.”

She blinks at him once and looks down at the map. “I’m picking my mages.”

“I assumed you would.”

“And… I’d like one templar with me, actually.”

“Who?”

Eliza flushes slightly. “Lysette.”

Cullen frowns. “She’s overseeing the day-to-day operations in the valley.”

“Rylen’s west, and they’re the only ones I trust,” she says simply.

Cullen sighs, refraining from reaching up to massage his temples. “I can have Girard take over in her stead.”

“Thank you,” she says, and her tone makes Cullen think she might mean it, and he looks up at her to find her appraising him with a measure of solemnity behind her eyes. “If we may discuss something of a more personal nature?”

_And here come the sister threats._ “By all means.”

“Have you told my sister you’ve stopped taking lyrium?” Cullen’s breath stills in his throat. He thinks if he were holding something he might have dropped it. “She didn’t live in a Circle her entire life, but I did. And I know what it looks like.” Eliza’s lips press into a thin line as she searches his face.

He swallows around a dry lump in his throat. “She knows.”

Eliza nods. “Try tea brewed from nightshade and arcanist’s deathroot,” she says, “for the dreams. And chewing the leaves of elfroot will help with headaches.”

Cullen searches her face for any sign of deception or malice, but finds only grim sincerity. “I will.”

“I watched a woman so far gone and desperate for relief that she threw herself from the tower for the sea to claim her,” Eliza says. “I don’t know your motives; they must be painfully noble and it’s none of my business. But for you to meet a similar fate would destroy her.”

“I know,” Cullen says, voice low and throat raw.

“And,” she starts with a wry smile, “despite whatever my own opinions are, the Inquisition would be hard-pressed to find a commander half as good as you.”

Cullen huffs a laugh—weak, if not genuine. “Thank you, Eliza.”

She turns from the table and heads toward the heavy doors.

“I’ll leave instructions for the tea on your desk. Try not to kill yourself while I’m gone.”

“Try not to get yourself killed on the road,” he retorts, which earns him a sharp laugh as she pulls the door open. It shuts behind her without another word, and Cullen is left alone with the maps and thoughts of eyes like jade and a silvery laugh ringing in his ears.

* * *

_Soderquist:_

_Harding delayed in Exalted Plains until your relief. Take Lavellan with you. Should be drier._

_-Rutherford_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much has happened. Again, thank you for your unending patience. I should probably learn to not post in the middle of the night, but why change now? 
> 
> This may be messy because I'm tired of looking at it. Is that unprofessional? yeah, but it's fanfiction. We're all here for fun. A comma splice isn't gonna kill anyone.
> 
> As always, I can be found yelling in the tags on Tumblr @lonely-spaghetti (hyphen, unfortunately, included).


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